FAR away, toward the other side of the round earth, far to the east and south of America, lies the great continent of Africa. There live many people strange to us, with their black skins, kinky, woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips. These black people we call Africans or negroes, and it is a little child among them that we are going to visit by and by. Different as these African people of the negro race are from us, who belong to the white race, they yet belong to the same great family, as we say. Like all the peoples of all the races of men on this big earth, they belong to the human family, or the family of mankind. So we shall call the little black child whom we are going to visit our little black cousin. We need not go so far away from home, indeed, to see little black children with woolly, kinky hair and flat noses like the little African. In the sunny South of our own land are many negro children as like the little negro cousin in Africa as one pea is like another. Years and years ago slave-ships brought to this country negroes, stolen from their own African homes to be the slaves and servants of the white people here. Now the children and great-grandchildren of these negro slaves are growing up in our country, knowing no other home than this. The home of the great negro race, however, is the wide continent of Africa, with its deserts of hot sand, its parching winds and its tropical forests. So, as we wish to see a little African cousin in his own African home, we are going to visit little black Mpuke instead of little black Topsy or Sammy, whom we might see nearer by. It's away, then, to Africa! Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BOY 9 II. BLACKSMITH AND DENTIST 17 III. WORK AND PLAY 23 IV. THE ELEPHANT HUNT 28 V. SONG AND STORY 35 VI. THE BATTLE FEAST 46 VII. THE AFRICAN MEDICINE-MAN 53 VIII. THE GORILLA 60 IX. THE GORILLA HUNT 70 X. THE RACE OF DWARFS 76 XI. HOW THE DWARFS LIVE 79 XII. SPIDERS 85 XIII. LAND-CRABS 93 List of Illustrations PAGE MPUKE _Frontispiece_ THE VILLAGE 21 HUNTING ELEPHANTS 29 "HIS FOLLOWERS LOOK UPON HIM WITH THE GREATEST ADMIRATION" 47 "HE SAT DOWN ON HIS HAUNCHES" 74 "AFTERWARD THE WHOLE ROOF IS COVERED WITH LEAVES" 80 Our Little African Cousin CHAPTER I. THE BOY.