He was born at Riga in December 1836, and was the son of a merchant. He studied at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he took his degree as Doctor of Philosophy, and devoted himself from his boyhood to the science of botany. At his first school one of the masters was a son of a missionary in South Africa; he used often to describe the wonders of that country, and perhaps it was in this manner that his mind was turned towards that country which afterwards created his career. But the proximate cause was a collection of plants placed in his hands to arrange and describe. In 1860, the young Freiherr von Barnim, accompanied by Dr. Hartmann, had made a journey in the region of the Nile, where he had fallen a victim to the climate. His collections were brought home, and as Schweinfurth day after day studied these dry corpses, a yearning came upon him to go to the land where he might behold them in all their bloom and their beauty, and where he might discover new species—those _golden joys_ for the explorer. In 1863, he left Berlin for Egypt, and having botanised in the Delta of the Nile, travelled along the shores of the Red Sea, skirted the Highlands of Abyssinia, passed on to Khartoom, and finally, his purse being empty, returned to Europe, after an absence of two years and a half, with a splendid collection of plants. But soon he languished for Africa again, and submitted to the Royal Academy of Science a plan for the botanical exploration of the equatorial districts lying west of the Nile. His proposals were at once accepted; he received a grant of money from the Humboldt Institution, and, in 1868, he landed in Egypt. During three years he was absent in the _heart of Africa_, and, even before he had returned, his name had already become famous in Europe and America. Travelling, not in the footsteps of Baker, but in a westerly direction, he reached the neighbourhood of Baker’s lake, passing through the country of the Niam-Niam, and visiting the unknown kingdom of Monbuttoo. As an explorer, he stands in the highest rank, and merits to be classed with Mungo Park, Denham and Clapperton, Livingstone, Burton, Speke and Grant, Barth and Rohlfs. He can also claim two qualifications which no African traveller has hitherto possessed. He is a scientific botanist, and also an accomplished draughtsman. Park had some knowledge of botany, and Grant made an excellent collection, but both must be regarded as merely amateurs. In other works of African travel the explorer has given rude sketches to some professional artist, and thus the picture has been made; but Schweinfurth’s sketches were finished works of art. In a geographical sense, this work is of importance as a contribution to the problem of the Nile; and ethnologically it sets at rest a point which has long been under dispute, viz., the existence of a dwarf race in Central Africa. These Pygmies are mentioned by the classical writers; much has been said about them by modern travellers on the Nile; Krapf saw one