Appreciating these facts, Major Leonard made it his
business to consult at first hand the great book of nature as
it is manifest in Southern Nigeria, and to see the people as
they actually are, as they live, as they do, and as they think
and speak. The more he looked, and the deeper he studied,
the more evident it became to him that never has the
European understood the Negro ; and the present volume is his*
interpretation of Negro thought and expression.

Major Leonard draws a vivid picture of the wonderful
Niger delta, and he traces its effects upon the mind and
nature of its inhabitants, a country of moisture, marsh, and
malaria in the rainy season, but a land baked and parched,
with shrivelled foliage, in the dry season; to this dramatic
change between these contrasted seasons the author traces-
one of the manifold sources of the inherent dualism of native
character and social life.
Colonel Ellis has proved in a masterly manner the gradual
evolution that has taken place from west to east in the
religion of the natives of the Guinea Coast, and with this is
associated an analogous progress in the laws of descent and
succession to property, and in the rise of government. He
has also suggested that differences in the physical character
of each country in question have played a great part in this-
progressive evolution. The conditions of existence in the
Niger delta appear to be more similar to those that obtain in
the country of the Tshi-speaking peoples than those of their
more advanced neighbours to the east.

The environment of steamy tropical West Africa is very
different from that of the dry steppes and scrub of Central
Australia, so it is not surprising that there is a marked
contrast in social life and religion between Negroes and
Australians.