plished. The "Israel of the Alps" was saved. The Vaudois families returned from Switzerland, Germany, Holland. Their temples and schools were re-opened, and their mountains reechoed again their ancient hymns. Their own sovereign, suffering at first reverses in his war below, had to fly to them for refuge, and was loyally protected in their valleys. Their Catholic country had reason to be proud of them. In 1848 a petition was signed by Cavour, Balbo, d'Azeglio, and hosts of other Italian patriots, demanding and procuring their complete enfranchisement, for they were among the best citizens and best soldiers of the country. With the emancipation and unification of Italy they commenced what seems to be their great destination and mission, the design of their unparalleled history-the evangelization of the peninsula. They have been marching down from their mountains, planting Churches and schools all over the land, from Piedmont to Sicily, from Genoa to Venice. They have chapels, Sunday-schools, weekday schools, charity schools, hospitals, a printing-house, a theological seminary, and periodicals. Palaces have been given them for their theological school and printing operations, and, in some cases, for chapels. They have districted the whole country into five sections, that of Rome and Naples comprising eleven stations. They are the most legitimate religious reformers of Italy. Their remarkable story affords a lesson to the Church in all the world and for all ages. "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." ART. II.-EQUATORIAL AFRICA. LONG: Central Africa. Harpers. 1877. STANLEY: Through the Dark Continent. Harpers. 1878. AMONG the most recent books on Central Africa are the three placed at the head of this article. The first two might be characterized as records of failure as to the objects proposed, yet both furnish agreeable reading and valuable information. Neither Long nor Cameron added much to what readers of Burton, Speke, and Livingstone already knew about Victoria and Tanganyika lakes, and Stanley superseded both with later and fuller information; yet the observations of both have a comparative value as confirming or differing from the pages of Livingstone, Stanley, Baker, and Linant. C. Chaille Long is an American-Southern, Frenchized, Egyptized, jeune et brave, an officer in the Egyptian army, "more a soldier than a savant," "chief of staff to the expedition of Colonel Gordon, Governor-General of the Equatorial Provinces," "the territories surrounding the Victoria and Albert lakes," "annexed to Egypt" by Baker in 1872, after the most approved style of English and American annexation (or appropriation) of the lands of the semi-civilized or savage. In the spring of 1874 official duty called him, in company with Colonel Gordon, to Gondokoro, where, after the return of his chief, he philanthropically determined to gratify "the impatient desire of the world to know something of that mysterious re gion, the source of the Nile," "to connect the two lakes, Vio toria and Albert, the unfinished work of Captain Speke,” and to "visit and confer with that great African king, Mtésa or M'Tsé, of whom only vague accounts had been given by Speke."-P. 36. It is six hundred miles from Gondokoro to Victoria Nyanza the first two hundred and fifty of which, to the frontier outposts Fatiko and Foueira, he had military escort. This far Baker had penetrated. Beyond this Long wended his way almost alone, with one indifferent white companion, two black soldiers, and a few porters, to the capital of Uganda, on the northern shore of the now famous lake. He traveled during the rainy season, and his account of his fifty-eight days' trip is as lugubrious as the season. His itinerary runs, “rain and misery by day, and misery and rain by night;" "perpetual rain, fever, and misery ;""the route lay, day after day, through rain, bog, slime, and marshy earth, ravine, and slough, from whence the foulest odors arose, that nearly asphyxiated us." He "cannot concur in Sir S. Baker's eulogy of the Fatiko country as the 'Paradise of Central Africa.'" He has "never seen in all Africa any views of landscape that merit notice except the scenery on Lake Victoria Nyanza." "Central Africa is a deadly, pestiferous country ("a hell on earth," he says in one place) in spite of the 'trumbash' to the contrary of travelers," who "bid for sympathy for the negro ""a popular theme"--and who " must keep up with the procession,' though it be at the sacrifice of truth." Much of the book wears this tone of bilious depreciation of Africa, of the negro, of other travelers, of the efforts of African philanthropists, of things in general, except self, of whom, on all suitable occasions, the author is, of course, modestly laudatory. To captivate our candor he titles his volume "Naked Truths of Naked People," oblivious to the fact that the civilized have no special fondness for nakedness, but prefer, like the natives of Uganda, to see full dress, and do not object to a traveler's furnishing a reasonable amount of clothing to hard realities. Nature riots in imaginings, and clothes creation with a thousand deceptive appearances in motions, parallaxes, refractions, and complementary colorings. Long himself colors or rough-sketches, clothes or leaves naked, as suits his subject or his humor. There is a good deal of good reading in his easy, unpretending narrative, open as it is to criticism. Why he should call the Mississippi muddy and the Missouri limpid, (p. 23,) or write Ugunda when every other author has Uganda, is not evident. That he knew nothing of the beautifully ingenious structure of the languages of Central Africa, affording by a few simple sound-prefixes to words an infallible key to their meaning, would be no disparagement to him and no blemish to his book had he not unfortunately attempted, on page 119, to enlighten his readers on this subject. "The Ugunda," he says, calling the people of the country by the name of their country, "prefix M'-M'Ugunda, to designate the country of.'" (!) 6 The most cursory reader of books on Africa that have been for a dozen years before the English-speaking public knows that "U" prefixed signifies "country of;" "Wa" prefixed means "people of;" "M" prefixed, "a person of;""Ki” prefixed, "language of." Take an example from Speke, and find a similar one in Stanley, "Through the Dark Continent," vol. ii, Appendix: "Ugogo signifies the country of Gogo; Wagogo means the people of Gogo; Mgogo is a man of Gogo; Kigogo, the language of Gogo." The differences between Long and Stanley in putting Uganda words into English letters, or the endeavor to express African sounds by English vowels and consonants, are no greater, perhaps, than those of the inextricable jumble of orthographies given to Indian words by the first settlers of this country, or to Chinese words by the makers of Anglo-Chinese vocabularies. Besides the vocal differences that no written signs can express, there is, in human hearing and in human judgment of phonetic differences, something that is analogous to colorblindness, which wholly incapacitates some individuals for distinguishing sounds and rendering them into their nearest English equivalents. Comparing Long's vocabulary of "Ugunda" words with Stanley's after the above abortive attempt at philology, we should naturally incline to give Stanley's the preference. We smile when he writes, on his arrival at the court of the sable chieftain, Rionga, “At night a dance was given in my honor," with as much complacent gravity as if he were reporting a grand ball in honor of an embassador of the Khedive at the Court of St. James; but he taxes our credulity when he would have us believe that the Emperor of Uganda struck off thirty heads, by his executioners, "to crown in blood the signal honor of the white man's visit to M'tsé!" We are obliged to Colonel Long-breveted "colonel" by the Khedive for his valor and enterprise-for some glimpses along the Nile made familiar by other voyagers, from Khartoom to Gondokoro, and from Gondokoro to Lake Victoria, ground traversed in part by Burton, Speke, and Baker, as well as for confirmation of Schweinfurth in the West, on the Mittoo and Niam-Niam. In June, 1874, Long made his entrance into "Ugunda," where, being the first man ever seen on horseback, he was regarded, like Cortez in Mexico, a veritable centaur. Speke and Grant visited this despot of Central Africa in 1862, twelve years earlier, and Stanley and Linant in 1875, ten months later. Here, then, we reach ground where comparison is possible. As long as a traveler describes regions and tribes which he alone has seen we have no means of testing the accuracy of his statements. Here we have descriptions of Uganda and likenesses of the "son of Suna" by different hands, bearing a general resemblance, but colored and shaded according to the taste of the individual artist, and displaying the relative powers of the limners for sketching and picturing. February 19, 1862, Speke writes: "One march more, and we came in sight of the king's palace. It was a magnificent sight, a whole hill covered with gigantic huts such as I had never before seen in Africa." June 20, 1874, Long says: "Ascending a high hill, I stood facing an elevation not five hundred yards away, the palace of M'tsé, King of Ugunda." April 10, 1875, Stanley says: "We saw the capital, crowning the summit of a smooth rounded hill, a large cluster of tall, conical grass huts, in the center of which rose a spacious, lofty, barn-like structure. The large building was the palace, the cluster of huts the imperial capital." Speke, the first white visitor to this capital, in the youth and regency of this usurping and bloody chieftain, was assigned to remote and uncomfortable huts outside of the royal premises, and had great difficulty in getting near the court, perhaps on account of mingled fear and jealousy of so singular a visitor. Mtesa is now better acquainted with white men. Long and Stanley, with their suites, seem to have been at once assigned to pleasant quarters within the royal inclosure. The semicivilization of this born barbarian, his aroused ideas, his rude reachings after something better and higher, his desire to learn, his anxiety to know about every thing foreign, seem to have impressed most profoundly the few travelers who have hitherto visited him. Each has given us a pen portrait. Speke penciled him, Stanley photographed him, and wood-cuts have made us as familiar with his form and features as we are with Schweinfurth's King Munsa. Speke, at his first interview with African royalty, describes "a good-looking, well-figured, tall young man of twenty-five." Long's portrayal is, "A man of majestic mien, scarcely thirty-five years of age; more than six feet high; face nervous, but expressive of intelligence; large, restless eye, from which a gleam of fierce brutality beams out that mars an otherwise sympathetic expression; features regular; complexion a light copper tint." Stanley pictures the "foremost man of Central Africa," at first meeting, as "a tall, clean-faced, nervous-looking, thin man, probably six feet one inch high, and slender; intelligent, agreeable features; fullness of lips; general expression of amiability blended with dignity; large, lustrous, lambent eyes; color dark red-brown; of a wonderfully smooth surface; interested in the manners and customs of European courts, and enamored of the wonders of civilization; |