Mobangi River and the Libinza Lake," with whom this book is particularly concerned.
In part the book reproduces articles which have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and which have been ever since their appearance highly appreciated by all students. This has involved some little repetition here and there. But nobody will begrudge it who is anxious to have a statement of the total results of the author's enquiries, as nearly as they can be placed before the reader of a volume intended not merely for the anthropologist, but also for a somewhat larger public. We should perhaps have been glad of more exact details on some points; and the hope may be indulged that his well-earned leisure will enable Mr. Weeks hereafter to supplement the information here given with the further facts stored in his notes and in his memory.
He writes of the native with sympathy, but without sentimentality. He gives him credit for his good qualities, both mental and moral, but does not hide his numerous deficiencies: and he insists, and rightly insists, that he must not be treated as an equal, because he is not the equal of the white man, and he knows it. To treat him therefore as an equal only leads to disaster. The training given by the missionaries cannot produce its full beneficial results all at once. As Mr. Weeks, in defending it, truly and wisely says,—"The civilization of England is the outcome of a thousand years' teaching and training, and you cannot expect us to attain the same results in a generation or two. It is, at least, unfair of those who boast of their "superiority" to criticize us for not accomplishing in a generation with "inferior" material what it has taken a score of generations to accomplish in their own case" (p. 178).
Mr. Weeks lived so long among the natives of the Lower Congo that it is natural he should in this book, dealing with the Boloki, frequently refer to them by way of comparison or contrast. An instructive instance is his treatment of fetishes, where he carefully distinguishes between the belief and practice as they exist among each of these peoples. The doctrine of fetish on the Lower Congo has been exhaustively examined by Dr. Pechuël-Loesche in his important work, Volkskunde von Loango, in which
