ABSTRACT
In the early days of African exploration the interest of the geographical problems was so absorbing that but little attention was paid to those of other branches of natural science. This restricted range of interest was originally due to the fascination of the problems of the sources of the Nile and the course of the Congo, the exploration of the great lakes, and the discovery of the equatorial snow-capped mountains. It survived, however, owing to the once prevalent belief that Tropical Africa would never yield its fair share of help in the advancement of science. It was thought that all we had to expect from the exploration of this region was the record of new topographical facts and the removal of the blank spaces from our maps. Some of the problems its natural history presented to us were regarded as too complex to be solved with the available methods of inquiry. For example, the extent to which the tribes have intermarried and intermingled, have acquired new languages and lost all knowledge of their own, has so confused the race characteristics, that many authorities have sadly confessed it to be absolutely impossible to place African anthropology on a scientific basis. The evidence of this region on the remaining subjects was, on the other hand, regarded as too simple and monotonous to affect the development of scientific principles. Thus, when it was reported that from whatever side approached, in whatever direction traversed, the whole interior of the continent consisted of one vast expanse of gneiss and schist, geologists were ready, with Sir Roderick Murchison, to dismiss Africa south of the Sahara as a continent without a history.
