Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-15
THE CRITICS REVIEW.
Volumes That Cast Some Light Upon
the Dark Continent.
THREE NOTABLE PRODUCTIONS,
Written BY Persons Who Should Know
Whereof They Speak.
5HE POINTS OF GENERAL INTEREST

1HE POINTS OF GENERAL INTEREST
In these days, when so much Highland
some of it of an unpleasantly lurid quality
is being cast into the gloom of darkest
Africa" books about that mysterious
continent are sure to find plenty of interested
readers. Adventures are always attractive,
and in Africa the journals of the explorer
seem to be crSmmed with adventures of the
most thrilling kind. There is so much to
tell about, so many wild people to inter-
view, so many queer customs to narrate, so
many strange sights to describe, that the
visitor to that great country comes back
with a story which has no end, and for
which we have no desire to have an end.
Since the DAYS of Leo Africanus, the Arab,
who reported that the people of the Soudan
light fires under their bedsteads at night
to keep them warm, all sorts of marvellous
tales have been told about the Africans, and
have been received with incredulity, and
then afterward-most of them-haye been
found out to be even less wonderful than
the truth.
Here are three books about Africa. One is
the biography OF one of the first great travel
ers in that then undiscovered country. An
other is an account OF the adventures of a
newspaper man who went out to ind Stanley.
And the third was written by one of Stan
ley's compaDions, man who was here in
town a month or so ago, and who knows
more than he wishes he did about all that
horrible Major Barttelot business which we
have to read about just now in the papers.
One of the things which they show in
London at the STANLEY and African
Exhibition" besides the hideous idols,
and the sheaves of poisoned ar
rows, and the trophies of lances
and battle axes, and Bishop Harrington s
coffee pot, and Gordcn's letters, and Arab
slave. whips and yokcs and collars, and DR..
Livingstone's forks and teaspoons, and
shoes, and Mr.. Stsnley's cap, which you see
in the pictures, and his knife and water
bottle, and the compass which he carried
when he found Livingstone-one among
the hundreds of remarkable sights which
one sees who turns out of Regent street into
Africa, as represented in the Victoria gal
lery, is a great pair of horns, which once
adorned the stout head of an African buffalo.
The buffalo carried the horns even more for
use than for beauty, and he made such Wig
orous use of them one day in the year 1888
that he nearly put an end TO the life OF Mr..
Joseph Thompson, who unluckily hap
pened to get in the wav of these
enterprisng weapons of ofense. 1t
was the buffalo which died on that
occasion, fortunately for Mr.. Joseph
Thompson and Tor US. For here is book
written by traveller himself, a biography
of Mungo Park "Mungo Park and the
Niger is the title of the book. Dodd,
Mead & Co. are the American publishers.
j. R. Weldin & Co. are the Pittsburg book
sellers. This is the latest volume in the
"Great Explorers" series, several INSTALL
ments of which L have already noticed in
this column.
'The Stanley and African Exhibition" is
rich in relics of Mungo Park. His watch is
there, and a metrical version of the Psalms
of David which he carried, and letters which
he wrote and sketches which he made and
his last journal. Park is on his way to find
out the termination of the Niger. Behind
him are months of exposure, and sickness
and peril and miraculous escapes and
horrihle PrivRtions; before him is a
Journey OF some thousands of miles
along a great river with sunken rocks
along the bottom, and dangerous rapids, and
banks lined with savage people armed with
poisoned arrows. Park has little handful
of brave men in rotten boat. He writes:
'My dear friend, MIR. Anderson, and like
wise Mr.. Scott, are both dead. but, though
all the Europeans who are with me should
die, and though 1 were myself half dead, L
would still proceed, and if could not sue
ceed in the object of my journey, would at
least die on the Niger"
You stop and look long time at those
determined words traced on that common
bit OF paper, and try to realize the circum-
stances amid which they were written.
Mungo Park did die on the Niger. The
treacherous and violent river, and the
treacherous and hostile savages made set
at him both together, and that was the end
of his extraordinary career. But you do
not think so much of his death as of his life,
when you read that journal of his. 1t is all
there in a sentence.
Joseph Thompson had good subject as
signed him when he sat down to write the
lie of Mungo Park, and he has done we'll
with it. 1t is more interesting than Rider
Haggard, this little book OF wild experiences
and hairbreadth escapes.
Park was a Scotchman. That accounts
for that metrical version of the Psalms OF
David which he bore about with him. That
accounts for the queer name he had. Mungo
was a Scotch saint in the DAYS long ago.
The cathedral at Glasgow is named in his
.hOnor. He was one of several eccentric
saints of that time of whom it is related
t,at they were won't even in winter, to
wade out into the icy waters of
c nearest river, and there, up to their
necks in tine cold stream, recite in a
loud voice the whole OF David's Psalms,
from No. l straight on to No. 150,
without stopping. Mungo Park had his
share of standing up to his neck in rivers
O. which the good saint had never dreamed,
and he endured privations and distresses
which would have frightened the hearts of
the majority of the dwellers upon this
planet, even of the saints.
Here it is all set down in most readable
shape in Joseph ThompSon's book, with a
preface and a supplement which tell the story
of the Niger river from the beginning to the
present and from its source to the great sea.
One of the most remarkable facts in the
book is the perfect indifference which
Mungo Park had about the slave trade. 1t
was going on in all its horror. The white
gowned and turbaned Arab was
the same emissary of the devil
in Africa then that he is now
And Park saw the worst of it. And he
s.w his own countrymen busy at it, handing
ont guns and gin with one hand and drag
gIng in slaves with the other, and so doubly
cursing that misfortunate country. And
yet Park rather thought that the slave trade
was a good thing! When the slaves in the
chain gang fell in exhaustion and were
whipped up into line, and finally casting
themselves upon the earth refused to go
further and had 10 have their throats cut,
Park walked on ahead" not wishing TO
see it done, but apparently considering that
it was not such very dreadful thing to do.
And that was only hundred years agol
II.