ETIQUETTE IN AFRICA.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1769, 21 October 1879, Page 3

ETIQUETTE IN AFRICA.

Major Serpy Pinto, whose full report will be made to the British Association at Sheffield, discusses, in his preliminary report to the Boyal Geographical Society on his journey from Benguela to Natal, the delicate subject of costume in the interior of Africa. Those unacquainted with the question might have supposed that it could be dismissed as briefly as the subject of snakes in Ireland. This, however, is far from being the case. Major Pinto writeß : —" It has been already reported by somebody in this country I have mentioned my having fallen in with a Portuguese explorer in evening dress with a tail-coat and white neck-tie, and that I had come across an English zoologist simply attired in a pair of trousers and in fhirt-sleevee. The positions which these two gentlemen occupy are very different one from the other, and their characters are no less so. Jose de Anohietta, the Portuguese explorer, has been a resident in Africa for eleven years, and holds an official position under the Portuguese Government. He is aided by the Portuguese authorities, and is employed making scientific collections foi the Zoological Museum in Lisbon. Dr. Bradshaw, the Englishman, is simply a r priyate explorer, who travels about as he thinks proper, makes up collections for sale on his own account, and is not subsidised by any one. He has become inured to the hardships of his solitary life in the region where, for the last five years, he has been leading a by no means enviable existence. The positions of the two gentlemen are, therefore, very different. Anchietta does not consider that the fact of his living in the forests of Africa should interfere in any way with his European habits. He acts, therefore, as he used to do in Lisbon or in Paris ; wears his tail-coat and white neck-tie, and, although away from civilised centres, revels in his scientific books, and manages to keep up his studies as though he were in Europe. Dr. Bradshaw, on the contrary, has a taste for living in the bush in the same style as a native. Being a first-rate Bportsman, he wanders in the primitive forests more boldly than a native, and takes quite naturally to existence in those savage regions. Such are the facts, and I had not the slightest idea of comparing characters, and far less of depreciating the high merits of my worthy English friend the doctor, towards whom I shall always feel the greatest gratitude for the kindness bestowed upon me,'^