servants, and his own people were stopped and nearly confiscated by the governor of Khartoum on their return, for having been concerned, like all the rest of the world, in the traffic; for, unknown to their master, they had a little venture of their own in human flesh. And for that matter, what were the two Niam Niam, whom Schweinfurth brought back with him, and little Tikkitikki himself, whom he exchanged for a dog, but the slaves of the traveller himself? Again, as to the cannibalism which he found rampant among the Niam Niam and farther south, though Schweinfurth abhorred it and rarely ventured to eat anything unctuous, except ants, lest the grease should be human fat, he accepted it as another institution, and readily availed himself of the fleshpots of the Niam Niam and Monbuttoos to enrich his anatomical collections, taking credit to himself for rescuing these poor remains of humanity from an ignoble oblivion in Central Africa, to attain a kind of immortality when numbered and catalogued in the Museum at Berlin. We have perused his book with the greatest interest, and part from him with regret. On June 26, 1871, he embarked at the Meshera, when we are sorry to say he heard that poor old Shol, the Lady Bountiful of the swamps, had been barbarously murdered in his absence by some Nubian marauders. After a prosperous voyage down the Gazelle and through the grass barrier, he reached Khartoum on July 2ist. On August 9th he departed for Berber and Suakin, and on September 30th landed at Suez. By November 3rd he reached Messina, and was thus once more on the soil of Europe after an absence of three years and four months. As we write we are glad to hear that Dr. Schteinfurth has been appointed by the khedive director of the Museum of Natural History at Cairo.
Of very different character is the other work to which we now direct the reader's attention. Our German naturalist for the sake of science shut his eyes to many iniquities and abominations, and even made use of them to further his researches; but Sir Samuel Baker's volumes breathe but one spirit from beginning to end, and that is the extermination of the slave-trade on the Upper Nile. On his former journeys, as described in "The Albert Nyanza," and "The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," the prevalence of the traffic had so shocked his sense of humanity, and so convinced him that nothing could be done for the material or moral improvement of Central Africa till the slave-trade was extinguished, that he joyfully accepted the command of an expedition organized by the khedive in council, for the purpose, as was expressly stipulated in the firman, "of suppressing the slave-trade and introducing a system of regular commerce," which could only be done, as another article of the firman expresses it, by "subduing to the khedive's authority the countries situated to the south of Gondokoro." The supreme command of this expedition was accordingly confided to Sir Samuel White Baker for four years, commencing from the 1st of April, 1869; to whom was also given in as many words "the most absolute and supreme power — even that of death — over all those who may compose the expedition." Of this expedition it will be sufficient to say that, so far as its commander was concerned, nothing was left undone to ensure its success. Three steamers, and two steel lifeboats by the best English makers, were ordered to be so constructed that they could be carried across the Nubian Desert on camels in plates and sections. These being completed, the commander, now raised to the rank of pacha, started with an English staff, of whom Lieut. Julian Baker, his nephew, was the chief, and acompanied by his wife, the inseparable companion of his travels, he reached Khartoum by way of Suakin early in January, 1870. During this time the whole expedition which, when it reached Khartoum, should have consisted of nine steamers and fifty-five sailing-vessels containing more than 1,600 men, should have been already on its way; but on reaching that emporium of the Upper Nile Baker soon found that his undertaking was very unpopular, that every one was against it, and that every good Mohammedan in the place was convinced that it would be quite right to coalesce against an expedition commanded by a Christian avowedly to annihilate the slave-trade upon which Khartoum existed. In fact, as Baker expresses it, "the khedive in the north issued orders which were neutralized in the south by his own authorities." At last, after infinite trouble, the whole fleet, with the exception of the steel steamers from England, which, under the care of Mr. Higginbotham, the chief engineer, had then only reached Berber on the Nile, started on February 8, 1870, by which time eight months of the first of the four years during which Baker was to com-
