Dr. Schweinfurth spent three years exploring the regions of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, and returned to Europe in the autumn of 1871. During the course of his journeys he took no observation of latitude or longitude, but kept a most accurate dead reckoning. He laid down with astonishing accuracy much of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, of the courses of the Rōl, the Roah and its affluents, the Dogoru and Tondi, the Jur, Nyenam, Ji, Biri, Kuru, and Dembo tributaries of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the upper waters of the Sue and Yabongo; lastly, he crossed the Nile watershed and entered that of the Congo, thus discovering the upper waters of the Welle River and its many affluents. Here he thought that he had entered the basin of the Shari River, but, as we know now, he had discovered the head streams of that most important affluent of the Congo, the Welle-Ubangi. Dr. Schweinfurth gave the first true and particular account of the Congo Pygmies under the name of Akka, whom he found in the thickly forested region on the northern limits of the Congo watershed; he drew our attention to those remarkable “gallery” forests,[84] and to the existence in the Nile basin of the chimpanzee, the gray parrot,[85] and other West African types. He discovered a slightly civilised race on this Congo-Nile water-parting--the Mangbettu--speaking a language which has no known relations, but leading a life singularly similar to that of the other semi-civilised Negro states of Unyoro and Uganda. The Mangbettu and their chiefs exhibit traces of former intermixture with Hamitic people. Dr. Schweinfurth also told us much we did not know before as to the Nyam-nyam,[86] the Bongo, and the Dinka tribes. Schweinfurth possessed many qualifications for writing a book on African exploration. He was a scientific botanist, and knew a great deal of zoölogy. He had a quick ear for languages, and wrote down vocabularies of the important dialects. He collected invaluable notes on ethnology and anthropology. Although he was unable to do much photography, he was a skilled draughtsman, and his beautiful drawings are apt illustrations of his book. As regards the value of the information he collected, no such book as Schweinfurth’s had appeared before, with the exception of Barth’s classical work on the Western Sudan; but Schweinfurth’s book was far ahead of Barth’s in the matter of illustrations. These are as accurate as photographs, and yet much clearer. More than any previous traveller who had written on Africa, Schweinfurth is able to bring to our mental vision the different aspects of vegetation. He describes the tree-lilies (_Dracænæ_), with their bouquets of leaves like bayonets and their short, woody stems, the Candelabra euphorbias, the coral red aloes, the dragon-like _Bucerosia_, the leathery _Sanseviera_, and the gigantic clumps of the grass-green _Salvadora_, which characterise the northern flanks of Abyssinia. [Illustration: “PAPYRUS, FIFTEEN FEET HIGH.”]