Abstract
WHEN in the 'nineties of last century I had the great good fortune to make the acquaintance of my valued friend, the late Canon John Roscoe, he was settled as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society among the Baganda, the great tribe or nation which has given its name to Uganda, in Central Africa. But he had previously resided in the same capacity for some years in that part of East Africa now called Tanganyika, which was afterwards taken over by Germany and known as German East Africa. Of his life in that country and his observations of the native tribes he has given a brief account in a volume published long afterwards, “Twenty-five Years in East Africa”. The account includes the notice of a curious form of human sacrifice practised by the natives which he succeeded in suppressing. He left the country at the time when the Germans took possession of it, and falling into the hands of the Arabs, who opposed the German invasion, he and his wife narrowly escaped being put to death by their captors, the messenger who brought their ransom only arriving about an hour before the time fixed for their execution.
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FRAZER, J. Canon John Roscoe. Nature 130, 917–919 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130917a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130917a0