[Transcriber's note: This book contains a few oddly spelled words, e.g. "poinded", which may have been intended as "impounded". This, and others, have been left as printed.] [Frontispiece: Henry Drummond] TROPICAL AFRICA BY HENRY DRUMMOND, LL.D., F.R.S.E. AUTHOR OF "NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD." NEW YORK JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER 1890 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA: THE RIVERS ZAMBESI AND SHIRE CHAPTER II. THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY: LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA CHAPTER III. THE ASPECT OF THE HEART OF AFRICA: THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE CHAPTER IV. THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA: ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE CHAPTER V. WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU: A TRAVELLER'S DIARY CHAPTER VI. THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY CHAPTER VII. MIMICRY: THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS CHAPTER VIII. A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH CHAPTER IX. A POLITICAL WARNING CHAPTER X. A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE PREFACE. It is the genial tax of literature upon Travel that those who have explored the regions of the uncivilised should open their bag of wonders before the world and celebrate their return to clothing in three or four volumes and a map. This exaction, in the nature of things, must shortly abolish itself. As a minor traveller, whose assets are few, I have struggled to evade even this obligation, but having recently had to lecture on African subjects to various learned and unlearned Societies in England and America, it has been urged upon me that a few of the lecture-notes thrown into popular form might be useful as a general sketch of East Central Africa. Great books of travel have had their day. But small books, with the larger features of a country lightly sketched, and just enough of narrative to make you feel that you are really there, have a function in helping the imagination of those who have not breath enough to keep up with the great explorers. The publication of "The White Ant" and "Mimicry" has been already forestalled by one of the monthly magazines; and the "Geological Sketch" is rescued, and duly dusted, from the archives of the British Association. If the dust of science has been too freely shaken from the other chapters, the scientific reader will overlook it for the sake of an over-worked public which has infinite trouble in getting itself mildly instructed and entertained without being disheartened by the heavy pomp of technical expression.