Lenz's Sketches From West Africa

Abstract

DR. LENZ'S “Sketches from Western Africa” are unusually interesting and instructive. They are not descriptions of travel in the ordinary sense of the word, but form a collection of essays, perfectly independent of each other, describing in a masterly manner the natural and social conditions of that scantily investigated coast, as they presented themselves to the eminent traveller during a journey undertaken at the request of the German African Society, and extending over three years (1874 to 1877). Everything, therefore, which Dr. Lenz describes, he has seen and witnessed himself, and apart from this important advantage the sketches have that additional one, that they are written from a completely unprejudiced and neutral point of view as far as the social or political conditions of the various West African tribes are dwelt upon. Thus a series of no less than fourteen different pictures of travel are presented to the reader, and it is indeed difficult to determine which of them are the most interesting.

Skizsen aus Westafrika.

Selbsterlebnisse von Dr. Oscar Lenz. (Berlin: Hofmann and Co., 1878.)