AN AFRICAN EXPLORER'S STORY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5257, 13 May 1895, Page 2

AN AFRICAN EXPLORER'S STORY.

There was a charming simplicity and directness about the story Mr S/L. Hinde told the Eoyal Geographical Society last night (says the Pall Mall Gazette of March 12). He spoke of a war in which Arab forces numbering a hundred thousand men were destroyed or dispersed, great towns of 30,000 and 60,000 inhabitants stormed and razed, some measure at least of vengeance taken for the murder of Emm Pasha, and the Arab slave-raiders driven beyond Lake Tanganyika. In all thia, and much more, Mr Hinde took a considerable Bhare, and his account of it bore a clobo resemblance in its businesslike succinctnesß to an official despatch. On the natural wonders of the Congo Free State Mr Hinde spoke more at large. The inhabitants of the region in which he was at work are almost all cannibals, it appears, but they have the saving virtue of cooking all they eat. Some of them ate pigmies, and use poisoned arrows, but the poison is not invariably fatal. There are huge and odoriferous marshes, but though the expedition was involved in them for days together there wbb no case of fever. The expedition entered a village on a gorgeous pavement composed of human skulls; it passed by a tomb where a' chief had been buried in the company of one hundred slaughtered men and one hundred living women ; it captured some of ths murdorera of Emm Pnoha and hanged them, and, not content vith that, photographed them beforehand.