Abstract
ONE cannot read Consul Elton's Journals without feeling how great a loss his death has been not only to the cause of the native African, but to African exploration. Elton was only thirty-seven years of age when he succumbed to the hardships of African exploration, but he had already done more than his share of hard and useful work. The handsome and beautifully illustrated volume before us deals with his observations and adventures in Africa from 1873, when he went to Zanzibar as Vice-Consul to his death in December, 1877, when trying to push from the north end of Lake Nyassa to the coast at Dar-es-Salaam. Much of the earlier part of the volume tells of the work Elton did in putting down the slave-trade in the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar. In carrying out this work he had to visit most of the coast from Zanzibar to beyond Mozambique, as well as Madagascar, and with the details of his more immediate mission, is mixed up a good deal of geographical information. He carried on his works of benevolence and exploration on his appointment as Consul of Mozambique. The chief novelty of the volume, however, is in the second part, in which the story of the journey from the north end of Lake Nyassa north-east to the coast is told. Here Elton, Cotterill, and their companions broke on fresh ground, and made substantial additions to our knowledge of African geography and African people. With the main results of this journey we are already familiar, through the description of Mr. Cotterill at the Geographical Society and elsewhere. Elton left Mozambique in July, 1877, Livingstonia at the south end of Nyassa in September, and the north end on October 15. The country traversed was mainly hilly, rising in the Konde Mountains, north-west of Nyassa, to 12,000 feet. Elton speaks of the country as the “Garden of Africa.” The party were delayed for a time in Merere's Country in the Konde Mountains, by one of those little wars, which so often embarrass African explorers, and during the delay some hardships had to be endured, which no doubt told on Elton's health. On December 19 he succumbed to what seemed sun-stroke, and was buried under the shade of a baobab in South Ushekke. Cotterill conducted the expedition to Bagamoyo, over what is comparatively well-known ground. In completing the narrative of the expedition and editing his late fellow-traveller's journals, in preference to publishing a narrative of his own, he has acted with an unselfishness which deserves to be acknowledged. The book is altogether one of much interest. The Rev. A. E. Eaton contributes a short Appendix on the Natural History of the Kungu Fly, out of which the natives to the north of Nyassa make cakes.
Travels and Researches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and Central Africa.
From the Journals of the Late J. Frederic Elton, H.B.M. Consul at Mozambique. Edited and Completed by H. B. Cotterill. Maps and Illustrations. (London: Murray, 1879.)
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Travels and Researches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and Central Africa. . Nature 20, 218 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/020218a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/020218a0