ABSTRACT
If an apology was necessary for my venturing to intrude upon the Public with a volume upon the “Modern Languages of the East Indies,” with regard to which I had some knowledge, the result of a residence of a quarter of a century in India, what can I say in justification of a volume upon the “Modern Languages of Africa,” concerning which I know absolutely nothing? In all humility I attempt now, as I did then, to fill a vacuum, which had forced itself on my notice. It came about somewhat in this way. I was Honorary Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, Member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, of the Committee of the Church Missionary Society, and of the British and Foreign Bible Society, of the Translation Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the subject of Africa, its tribes, and Languages, was always coming up. I naturally looked about for some book which would tell me generally about these Languages, and no doubt the “Universal Ethnology” of F. Müller of Vienna did tell me a great deal, but the African Chapters were scattered through a volume, devoted to the whole World, and the purport of the Treatise was Ethnological rather than Linguistic. Moreover, I soon became aware that in Modern Books of Travel disclosures were being yearly made of hitherto unknown Languages, and under my eyes in England books were being published which had escaped the learned World on the Continent.
