Journals and Papers of Chauncy Maples, D.D., F.R.G.S., late Bishop of Likoma, Lake Nyasa

Abstract

THE presence of an attractive and educated personality for some twenty years in equatorial savage Africa is explained by the fact that Chauncy Maples was an Oxford member of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa. The first sixty pages contain the journal of his journey through the Meto country, an abstract of which was given before the Royal Geographical Society in 1882. The last paper is the unfinished one of a series in the Nyasa News, the first paper printed on the lake, and started by him in 1893. It ends with pathetic abruptness by an unanswered question: he was drowned in the lake as he was writing it. The papers form a sequel to the “Life,” which has already been noticed in NATURE; they manifest a sincere, human and kindly perception of the aims of scientific investigation. There is much chatty natural history throughout these papers. One of them compares Anyanja with Melanesian as depicted in Dr. Codrington's “Studies.” But perhaps the most valuable contribution is the paper read in 1891 before the Oxford Graduates' Missionary Association on the power of the conscience, the sense of the moral law, and the idea of God amongst certain tribes in East Africa. Anthropologists will, in fact, find the first-hand impressions of a cultured English gentleman after years of residence. Journals and Papers of Chauncy Maples, D.D., F.R.G.S., late Bishop of Likoma, Lake Nyasa. Edited by Ellen Maples. Pp. 278. (London: Longmans and Co., 1899.)