The research conference syndrome has finally reached Liberia. Heretofore, Africa's oldest republic has been one of the least researched countries on the continent, and in terms of scholarly inquiry remains one of the least known. Not that there are not a number of books about Liberia; but there are so few by serious scholars, and of those even fewer of recent vintage. As Professor Warren D'Azavedo, one of the conference organisers and its chairman, pointed out, there is a dearth of basic ethnographic studies; in fact, we still do not know the delineations of Liberia's tribal map—nor, it may be added, its complete physical geography.