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SOCIAL LIFE

173

to go back to Africa, as he well may have done in moments of temporary depression, whereupon the zealous secretary of a philanthropic Society threatened poor Barth with an action for kidnapping if he did not send the boy back at once. Barth was amazed, and sought advice, which was that considering the sectarian bitterness with which the action would probably be carried on, the ease with which thoughtless expressions might be twisted into deliberate words, and the certain cost and tediousness of legal proceedings, it would be wiser for him to submit and to send back the boy. This he did with no little grief, and so all attempt to lexiconise and grammarise the Hausa language was thrown back for many years, during which a knowledge of it would have been of material use in various British operations on the West Coast of Africa.

A long subsequent attempt was, however, made with success by a small committee, of whom I was one and Major Leonard Darwin another, under the Presidency of Sir George Goldie, through whose efforts sufficient funds were collected to enable Mr. Robinson to study the Hausa language seriously and on the spot. Opportunities for learning it have now been afforded, and are used at Cambridge by prospective military and civil servants in West Africa.

Mr. Crawfurd (1783-1868) was then a vigorous old man of considerable moral weight and of great experience, with not a few amusing peculiarities (Sir Roderick Murchison called him laughingly, in public, the Objector General). He had been secretary to Sir Stamford Raffles, and, according to what he told to me, and I presume also to others, he was the sole