Chapter VII: “halcyon Days.”

About a month was spent in the calm and contemplative occupations described in the last chapter.

A CORNER OF OUR SETTLEMENT.

To face page 143.
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This period seemed in one way to pass all too quickly, for the days slipped by one after the other, and no date stood marked out prominently by extraordinary events; and yet for the amount of work performed and for the changes in our environment, that first short term of our residence on Kilima-njaro was an age, a cycle of history, especially for the natives. While two-thirds of my men were tramping to Taita and back to fetch the rest of my goods, I, with the remaining third, was hard at work during every twelve hours of daylight. Not only did we build the temporary houses and plant the kitchen-gardens I have already described, but we installed our cows and goats in a spacious stable, constructed with sufficient strength to resist a night attack from leopards; we set going a poultry-run of eighty fowls; and we established a primitive dairy, wherein the milk from our animals was laid out in large flat wooden dishes (bought from the natives), and produced such a liberal quantity of cream that when enough had been taken to churn into butter (this operation was really performed by shaking in a large bottle), the remainder served to enrich my afternoon tea or early breakfast. One morning towards the close of this most tranquil period my heart really swelled with proprietary pride, when I saw on my neatly-laid breakfast-table the first new-laid eggs of my poultry-yard, the first radishes from my garden, the first loaf from our home-made oven, together with the adjuncts of our dairy, a pat of butter and a jug of cream. With opulence came refinement and the renaissance of art. I was now no longer content to lodge in a hut, however dry and snug. I wanted a spacious house. The ground being cleared and levelled, I planned out with pegs and twine a residence of ample size and regular proportions—26 feet long and 18 feet wide, with two “wings” of 9 feet square at the sides. The roof was to rise to a height of 12 feet at the apex, in the centre, and slope down to 7 feet at the sides. The interior of the main building was to be again divided lengthways by inside partitions into two equal portions, one-half to furnish a long salon and reception-room, and the other to be subdivided again into three compartments, which would be respectively used as bed-room, bath-room, and store-room. Of the two wings, one would become my servant’s room, and the other a pantry where the crockery and table-gear should be kept. It was altogether a grand scheme, a majestic design, and when my six or seven builders were initiated into the plans they tapped their open mouths with their hands to express their admiration for such a bold flight in architecture. But the fact was that, like many ambitious projectors, my plans were too vast for the means at hand for carrying them into operation. During three months this great edifice was constructing, and a few days after the last touches were put to its embellishments I had, alas! to leave Moši for good, and my deserted palace doubtless remains behind (white ants and natives permitting) to testify to future explorers, by its (relatively) Cyclopean proportions and harmonious design, that an ambitious white man once sojourned in that spot.

While my building of clay and wood may prove but fleeting evidences of my long residence in Moši, the roads I made, and even the bridges over the shallow streams are likelier to subsist. One of my first actions on entering a savage country and residing there, though it may be only for a day or two, is to get men, axes, sickles, and spades, and clear a path from somewhere to somewhere else through the dense bush. It always seems to me that in so doing I am opening up, however feebly, the land to civilization. Moreover, if you are going to collect in the forest and study nature there, it is much pleasanter to have a decent path along which to walk to your basis of operations. So my broad tracks stretched right away in many directions from the settlement, and along them I could go backwards and forwards to my work.

So even was the tenor of my ways during this first month in Moši, that I can find no striking events worthy to lay before you, other than the mild domestic incidents of this bucolic life. As one day was the repetition of another, I may describe pretty accurately how a whole month was passed by retailing to you the petty incidents and occupations which made up the sum of my existence between awaking from my slumbers in the morning and retiring to my well-earned rest at night.

One typical day of my first month’s residence in Kitimbiriu shall be taken from my diary and laid before you, with a little filling in of details and addition of explanatory information, necessary to my readers, but superfluous in my own journal, where I write from one day to another with due regard for my memory of recorded events and observations.

About seven in the morning (in these equatorial regions it is scarcely light till nearly six) I hear the plashing of water in my bath, mingling with the last echoes of some fantastic dream—perchance some incongruous vision of English life that has come upon me in my heavy morning slumber—and I gradually awake, with many a sigh and groan, to find my servant Virapan filling my bath with several kettlefuls of warm water and a pail of cold from the stream, whose murmur I occasionally hear coming as a second to the treble of the cackling hens and bleating goats. Ah! how I hesitate to leave the shelter of my sheets and blankets! Though the slanting morning sunbeams pierce the crevices of the thatched wall, and fall in golden _paillettes_ on the matted floor, the thermometer still marks little over fifty, and the air is sharp and keen, even within my sheltered hut. Nevertheless, the steaming bath will soon be lukewarm if I dally, and moreover breakfast—and in this healthy life I love my meals, and look forward to them with tender longing—cannot be laid until the bath is out of the way, so with one impetuous bound I am out of the sheets, my pyjamas are flung off, and I can sponge myself with the warm water which, in the tropics, is so much healthier and more beneficial than the icy douche which strong-minded, generally disagreeable, people affect in England.

I find my pen was leading me into a detailed description of my toilet, an act so purely superfluous and uninteresting to the reader that I am glad I stopped short in time. Give me a quarter of an hour after my bath, and I am clothed, and brushed, and spruce, and standing at my cottage door lustily ringing a small hand-bell. When its last brazen tinkle is silent, cries are heard from the distant huts of my Swahili porters. “Tayari, Bwana, Tayari. Aya! Kazi, Kazi!” “Ready, master, ready. Work, to work!” These ejaculations are meant somewhat to appease me while the utterers are turning regretfully from their couches or their firesides, and donning their scanty garments. Then nine or ten men come running down the incline, for their quarters are higher up the hill than mine, and hastily form themselves into a line in front of my door.

I call over the roll: “Cephas?” (Cephas is the chief cook, and is engaged in cooking my breakfast, so I excuse his reply.) “Faraji?” “Ndimi, Bwana—here I am, sir,” comes a cry from the cowshed, where milking is going on. “Abdallah?” (Abdallah is for the time being head-man, and Minister of Public Works in my Cabinet. He is slightly deceitful, invariably courteous, always tidy and smartly dressed, rather a rogue but an accomplished one.) “Hapa, Bwana—here, sir.” “Fariǰala?” “Yes, sir.” (Fariǰala has been an old mission boy, and retains “Yes, sir,” as the last fragment of the English tongue. He also sings “Te Deums” when at work, imagining them to be popular English melodies. He is a good, willing fellow, thoroughly honest.) “Ibrahim?” (Ibrahim is the best man in the caravan. He is short, fat, with an enormous mouth, and always in a good temper.) And so I go through the list of names till the twelve are accounted for. This task over, I then have to attend to small ailments of some. This man has an ulcer, that a stomach-ache, another complains of a cough, more often the maladies suddenly assumed are of a less tangible character, like the neuralgia of civilization. “A pain here, sir, oh! so bad. I’m afraid I can’t work to-day.” “Oh, nonsense! you ate too much yesterday. Go and chop some firewood, that’ll do you more good than medicine.” And so all are finally told off to their tasks—two to attend to the gardens, one to get firewood, one to herd the goats, sheep, and cow, another to look after the fowls, five to build the big house or cut the roads, as the case maybe. Faraǰi and Cephas of course attend to the cooking, and nothing else.

Fig. 37.—Clematis and Hibiscus.
]

Now I am a free man, and may go for a stroll in the fresh morning air before breakfast is served, walking along the path that fringes the crest of the narrowing hill-spur on which the settlement is placed, gazing, perhaps, at the majestic snow-peak of Kibô which rises sharp and clear above the morning mists, or gathering wild flowers to deck my breakfast-table. Here grow gorgeous dissotises, large-petalled mauvered flowers, primrose-yellow and purple-centred hibiscuses, creamy-white clematis, with thick, woolly petals, and many lovely blossoms of balsams, and a mauve-white thing like phlox—quite a glowing mass of colour in my natural garden, which makes me hotly refute the theory that the tropics cannot produce flowershows equal to those of the temperate zone.

I come back in answer to the earnest appeals of Virapan, who assures me breakfast is getting cold, but I must yet delay my sitting down till my floral treasures are placed in water, and put in the centre of my repast. I must describe to you my breakfast-table. I have a right to pride myself on its appearance, as most of the good things it bears are our own local productions and not imported from Europe, and I want it to preach a little lesson that will show how much Africa may be made to yield in the way of comfort when comfort is sought. Of course this applies more to the resident than to the traveller, who cannot stay long enough in a place to develop its resources.

Firstly, there is a nice snowy cloth spread over the table, then the silver is bright, and the enamelled iron plates are clean, all details which are due to a little supervision over servants’ work. The grateful steam of coffee comes from a pretty _cafetière_, a little white jug contains hot milk from my own cow, there is a pat of fresh butter of our own making lying in a cool green leaf, a nicely-baked loaf, made from maize-flour and eggs (and in a long parenthesis I might explain that the flour is of our own grinding and sifting, and the eggs are from our own poultry); and lastly, there are grilled kidneys from a sheep we killed yesterday, fried bananas as an _entremet_, and a bowl of honey.

Of all these delicacies, only coffee and sugar are extraneous, so that I hope thus to show how much comfort and good living may be extracted even from savage Africa.

When the meal is finished I set out to visit my plantations. They are situated about half a mile from my house. The walk thither takes you along the little stream which supplies a canal, or, to use a more expressive Cornish word, a “leat” of water to our settlement, and the ground has been cleared and planted near the waterside, so that irrigation is easy. Here is working Kadu Stanley, a bright, willing Mganda boy, given by King Mtesa of Buganda to Stanley, when he visited that monarch in 1876. Kadu has sojourned several years on the Congo, and after his return to Zanzibar has taken service with me. I have made him head-gardener.

Here are planted all the seeds I have brought from England, together with potatoes, onions, &c., brought from Zanzibar, and many native vegetables as well. Already, after a month or six weeks, the growth is surprising. Radishes are still in good condition for eating, the mustard and cress have run to seed, turnips are nearly ready, carrots and cucumbers are coming up, and sticks have been already placed in long rows for the peas and beans. The purple-green shoots of the potatoes are springing up wherever “eyes” have been planted, some of the onions are in flower. The only recalcitrant thing is spinach, which for some reason will not flourish.

I leave Kadu and go onwards up the valley, sketch-book under my arm, and my small bird-gun in my hand. Across the stream there flits a large kingfisher, grey and rufous brown and verditer-blue, with red beak. Like the real aboriginal kingfisher, he feeds only on insects, as there are no fish in these streams. Fishing has been quite an afterthought with the kingfishers, and is a pastime by no means shared by all the members of the group. Many Australian species, the halcyon of the Cape Verde Islands, and this common East African halcyon found on Kilima-njaro never attempt to catch fish, even though they be near streams well stocked with piscine prey, but content themselves with the variety of insects that haunt the waterside. I shoot this kingfisher just to identify him, and afterwards, when his little stomach is opened, the carapaces of beetles and remains of grasshoppers are found within.

Fig. 38.—A ravine in Moši.
]

Now the stream I am ascending becomes two streamlets, and the valley bifurcates into two ravines, while the broad slope of a hill faces me, so I leave the pleasant path along the waterside and toil up the clayey ascent. But when I have reached the level crest of this bracken-covered height, I slip into a smooth and level track, winding along between low hedges of strychnia and dracœna, and giving off many side turnings which lead to native compounds and enclosures. Several maidens pass me shyly, going to market with bananas or neat baskets of millet meal or bags of Indian corn. Some of the bolder, who have perhaps met me before in the market-place, or at Mandara’s, give me the Čaga greeting, “Mbuia” (friend), to which I heartily reply, “Mbuia, mbuia.” How strange it is! In all probability many of these Čaga girls have never seen me or any other white man before; yet we meet in a lane suddenly, and beyond a somewhat timid shrinking to one side, there is no fear and no surprise exhibited. Each after the formal greeting wends his or her way tranquilly. And yet, to imagine a similar contrast, suppose some English country girls, say in the most rural depths of Somersetshire, were suddenly to come upon a naked black man striding along a leafy lane, armed with spear and shield, and decked with strange adornments, necklaces of human teeth, and such like, would they not in all likelihood shriek for help, or giggle convulsively, or in some obtrusive fashion display their amazement? Yet these African maidens, to whom I, clothed where they are accustomed to utter nakedness, with aneroid hanging round my neck, sketch-book under my arm, and gun in hand, suddenly appear, merely give me a modest greeting and a shy look, and quietly pursue their way.

KILIMA-NJARO SEEN FROM ABOVE MOŠI (“PALMS AND SNOW”).

To face page 152.
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Fig. 40.—Mkindu Palm.
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After a further ascent I arrive on the summit of a rounded hill which considerably o’ertops its fellows for miles round, and offers views of unexampled magnificence in all this lovely country. To the north, without a single fleck of intervening cloud, rises Kilima-njaro, the whole central ridge and both the peaks completely visible. The eye first rests irresistibly on the splendid snowy dome of Kibô, absolute in whiteness under the glare of the vertical sun, with a few faint purplish blots, like the crater-shadows on the moon’s face, coming out where the bare rock breaks through the snow, and then in the few hollows, gaps, or _crevasses_, tender cool shadows of pale blue break somewhat the dazzling effect of unsullied white. Below the snow-cap of Kibô lies a great stretch of purple moorland broken up dimly into ravines, cliffs, hillocks, and ridges by shadows of deeper tint, but seen with the eyes half shut seeming a band of purple colour merging into a colder bluish tint where it reaches the distant snow, and becoming darker and sombrer where it mingles with the middle distance of dark-green forest. To the left of Kibô, a rounded descent of the mountain-mass stretches down with some few jags and modulations till it passes away into the far-off plain, and to the right of the snowy dome a ridge nearly horizontal reaches to the sister and minor peak, the jagged Kimawenzi, which has merely patches and streaks of snow resting amid its strange black peaks and pinnacles.[17] The background to the entire scene is a sky of intense blue, which is almost free from cloud save for a few vapourous cumuli lying behind the centre ridge of the mountain. In the middle distance are grandly swelling, rolling hills, magnificently wooded with, in some cases, a forest growth so uniform that, looked down on from a height, its surface is like rich green velvet pile. Here and there, but rarely, on the hill-sides there are open patches of land, covered with short turf or bracken. These offer, by the side of the darker forest, tracts of lovely grass-green colour, almost unrepresentable in pigment, from the fact that in water-colours or oil there is no plain tint, or combination of tints, that will exactly give it, or in which any permanency can be hoped for. From the matrix of one or two of the nearer hills springs gush forth and flow through ever deepening ravines with musical clamour, though their course and their birthplace can only be conjectured at a distance from the greater luxuriance of the forest which they provoke. In the foreground I look upon the descending northern slope of the great hill from whose summit this unexampled view is obtained, and here there is an intricate mass of low forest, principally composed of the Mkindu palm (belonging to the genus _Phœnix_, a kind of wild date), mixed with indiscriminate shrubs, many of them overgrown with parasitic cucurbits and loranthus. This palm is the only member of the order I have ever found growing on the slopes of Kilima-njaro. In the plains below there are several others, the _Hyphœne thebaïca_, or branching palm; the “Mwale” (_Raphia vinifera_), and the _Borassus flabelliformis_, but I have never seen any of these on the mountain.

Having worked industriously at my sketch, and shot three sun-birds which were hovering round the teazle-like flowers of a labiate plant in my vicinity, I now begin to think of returning homeward, for lunchtime is approaching, and, besides, the monarch of mountains has begun to weary of his condescension; he thinks I have stared at him enough, and he is wreathing light fleecy clouds round his august features as a signal that the interview is at an end. So I gather up my sketching materials, pop the sun-birds into a roll of wadding in my _carnassière_, and stroll homeward through the red lanes bordered with dracœnas, aloes, strychnia, and bramble, the latter covered with delicious blackberries, and the strychnia, which is semi-cultivated by the natives, with tiny yellow fruit exactly resembling miniature oranges, though scarcely larger than big peas. These are good to the taste, and, according to the natives, wholesome to eat, though in some way I connect them with ideas of poisons, and never largely indulge in their consumption. As I near my settlement I hear a great clamour of tongues, and find a market is going on in the vicinity of the Zanzibaris’ quarters. About thirty Wa-čaga are there busy chaffering their goods for cloth and blue beads. The men are all naked, excepting for a tiny cloak or mantle of dressed fur round their shoulders. The women are principally clothed with thick bands of beads, but they generally have a short leathern apron or petticoat. The wares of these people consist principally of Indian corn, in the ripe grain, and also green cobs; two or three kinds of beans and peas; flour made from millet seed; tobacco in the leaf; honey; bananas, ripe and unripe; calabashes of sour milk or rancid butter, and numbers of live fowls. Perhaps on such a day as this I have purchased as many as eighty fowls for one “hand” (about an ell) of cloth each (approximate value 2_d._ an ell). Or there may by chance be a goat or sheep for sale; but this not often, as Mandara is supposed to own all the live-stock of the country as personal property, although he gives many goats, sheep, and cows to his subjects as presents, conditionally on their not being parted with, so he himself is almost the exclusive dealer in live-stock. I amuse myself by a little friendly chaffering before lunch, but leave all serious purchases to my servants, for the natives invariably deceive me when I wish to buy, either palming off old scraggy fowls, bad eggs, and adulterated honey on my inexperience, or else charging me extravagant prices.

One little item may be noticed in this market which will show how observant and practical the people are, and how they seize any lawful means of making money. I have only resided here, let us suppose, some few weeks, and yet the natives have noticed my fondness for eating blackberries, a thing they never do themselves for some reason or other. Consequently, without any hint from me, children have been sent by their parents to collect industriously all the berries to be got, and here they are, wrapped in banana-leaves, on sale for a trifle in cloth or beads. Also many women have brought bundles of firewood, so neatly done up and chopped into such handy logs that, although it seems superfluous to buy it, when one man’s mission in the station is to collect nothing else in the woods all day long, yet it is sold so cheaply, and is so conveniently ready for use, that I often purchase it, and feel by so doing that I am encouraging the enterprise and spirit of my black neighbours.

Fig. 41.—Čaga Doorway.
]

After lunch I sit for an hour or two skinning birds; then, when the afternoon sun is declining, I set out for another ramble. Perhaps before starting I sip a welcome cup of tea in the natural arbour behind my house. Then taking my sketch-book, I wander forth in delicious aimlessness, now stopping to sketch a distant view of Mandara’s village, seen from the head of our ravine, now scrambling up a bracken-covered hill-side in almost wild exuberance of spirits. “How happy life seems here,” I stop and reflect to myself, as, my face all aglow with the flush of exercise, I rest awhile, seated on some grassy mound at the summit of the hill, and looking down on my busy settlement beneath, where the men at work are so many ants creeping two and fro, my gardens are green patches, and my houses might be the tiny habitations of leaves and twigs which some species of ants are wont to construct. Whilst I am gazing over this most varied prospect—over the tiny beginnings of a colony on the hill below, over the many ridges of banana-covered hills beyond, and further away the illimitable plains marked and patterned like a carpet with patches of purple forest, streaks of yellow sand, red hillocks, and pale green savannahs—a slight noise behind me attracts my attention, and I look round to find a Čaga man regarding me with a friendly grin, which exposes a row of filed and villainous teeth. It is my milkman, he who supplies me every morning with an extra quantity of milk which is needed for butter-making. A conversation ensues, wherein neither understands the other to any extent, for I am as yet ignorant of Ki-čaga, and my interlocutor knows no Swahili. However, he evidently wants me to do something, for like a dog he will not leave me alone, but keeps going on a little way along the path, and then looking back. So I gather that he wishes me to accompany him. We soon arrive at the hedge round a native compound, and, passing through the narrow triangular doorway, girt about with living tree-trunks, and blocked, if need be, by a rough-hewn massive plank, we enter a small yard wherein stand three buildings. One is a neatlybuilt storehouse, raised on piles (as may be seen in the illustration), and the other two beehive huts, surmounted with peaks like hay-cocks; goats and fat-tailed sheep are feeding on the pea-shucks which a woman, who is shelling peas, casts from time to time on the ground; and fowls are busy picking in the several rubbish-heaps, or kitchen-middens, which stand outside the doorway. Little surprise is manifested at my entrance. Another woman comes out from the smaller house, and stares for a short time at the unexpected arrival, but the woman shelling peas scarcely looks up from her work. Invited by my Čaga friend to make myself at home I sit on the only available seat, a rough-hewn log cast on the ground, and commence a sketch of the scene before me. The storehouse is rapidly drawn in, the doorway of another dwelling is outlined, and I am just adventuring on a study of the seated figure shelling peas when she divines my intention, rises indignantly, and walks into her house. My host also seems a little uneasy, for the people look upon Art as magic, and imagine drawings are made of things and people for sorcerish reasons. However, I reassure him, put up my sketch-book, and rise to go. This Čaga man is (and always was throughout my stay) exceedingly amiable, and thinks perhaps this time that his fears about magic have hurt my feelings, so he presses me to accept some green ears of Indian corn, and together we go to the corn-field, outside the compound, and cut some five or six cobs, which are tied together by their sheaths and hung over my arm. Thus burdened, and taking a friendly farewell, I descend the hill and walk back to my settlement. Here I find two or three natives have come to see me, bearing several live monkeys for sale. The poor creatures are tightly tied to forked sticks, and are so bound with withes and strips of bast that they can only grind their teeth in impotent rage. I do not really want them, as they are of a very common species, but to encourage the people to search for and bring me live things, I buy them for a small amount of cloth. Then the canines of the savage males are docked, and the monkeys are tied round the hips with leathern thongs fastened to tree-trunks, and then relieved of their fetters and released. Whereon, of course, they career about at the length of their tether, vainly hoping to escape. Strange to say, they will all pause in their wild gyrations to eat bananas or other food that is thrown to them. (In the night, however, all escape, by gnawing resolutely through the leather bands which keep them in captivity.)

Fig. 42.—Čaga Storehouse and Dwelling.
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Fig. 43.—The Captive.
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When the monkeys are disposed of there is still half an hour or so before sunset, so I induce the natives to sit at my feet and instruct me in their language. Ah! If my readers knew how difficult it is to collect an accurate vocabulary they would be little disposed to blame travellers from savage regions who return without linguistic information. Think how you have to deal with people who have not the faintest conception of what you are about, except that it somehow has to do with magic, and is therefore not altogether lawful. You are without an interpreter, and can only hold up objects at first, and imply, half by gesture, that you want to know their names. Then as to more intricate questions, what weary work it is to elicit information, and how delighted one feels when some important doubt is solved, or a new explanation is unconsciously offered of some puzzling phenomena. The language of Kilima-njaro (Ki-čaga) is one of the Bantu group, which includes nearly all the African tongues south of the Equator. It is one of the prefix-governed tongues, and the forms of its various classes of prefixes are varying, but always show a common ancestral origin. The utmost number of known prefixes is by some computed at sixteen—by Bleek at eighteen, as he includes two _pre_-positions, “ko” and “mo” (“to” and “in”) with the regular prefixes. (See for further information, “Bantu Languages,” Chapter XX.)

Now in the language under consideration all the sixteen classes of prefix (except the twelfth) are represented, but some of them are much altered from the typical form. My object is to obtain examples of them all; but I want particularly to ascertain the form of the eighth prefix (a plural one). Unfortunately I cannot ask any of my friends, “What is your eighth prefix?” I should never be understood if I explained for a hundred years. I have to get at it in some other way. “What is this?” I ask, holding up a knife. “Ki-ošo,” they reply. “Just so,” I reflect, “‘ki’ is the seventh prefix, and the plural must give the form of the eighth.” “How do you say ‘many knives’?” I continue; “‘ki-ošo’ is _one_, what is for many?” “_Šingi_” (many), they reply. “No, but many _knives_?” “Šingi” is again repeated. Then I ask, “See, this is one knife—_ki-ošo kimo_ (holding up one finger). What is for _two_ knives?” (holding up two fingers). “Two fingers,” they reply, looking up very much puzzled. Then in despair I send for another knife, and placing it beside the original one again, ply them with a question. This only elicits the word for “another;” but, at length, after many disappointments, they are induced to say “‘Ši-ošo šivi’” (_two knives_), which gives me “Ši-ošo” as the plural of “ki-ošo,” and consequently “ši” is the form of the eighth prefix, and so on. But half an hour soon exhausts their mental energies, and they are sent away with a present, while I go to my dinner.

My little table has been laid with a snowy cloth, and the lamp placed on it spreads abroad its soft effulgence. My muddy boots are taken off, and my servant slips my feet into a pair of red morocco slippers that nestle into the skin rug just in front of my camp-chair. A pleasant book is placed at my side, and the gloom of the night and its weird children—the bats and the hawkmoths—are shut out by a heavy curtain, and I feel how pleasant and easy it is, even in Africa, to create an atmosphere of home. Here in three or four days my servants can build me a dwelling, and I can furnish it so that when my door is closed and my thoughts abstracted it needs an effort to realize that the wilderness lies outside.

When my dinner, a meal of three courses—soup, meat, and honey dumplings—is finished, the cloth is cleared, the lamp trimmed, and the door closed for the night. Then for two hours I sit and write my diary, much in fact of what I am rewriting now. But at length my eyelids grow heavy, I find my head nodding over the book, so I relax from my labours, undress, and creep thankfully into my snug little bed. I feel as safe and as much at home as in a well-appointed English inn. Only the occasional wild laugh of a prowling hyena, slinking round our settlement, or the distant booming roar of the hungry lion, recall to me almost pleasantly, that I am lodging in the wilds of Africa. But slumber soon intervenes, and thus ends, as far as consciousness is concerned, what my diary has characterized as a “thoroughly happy day.”

So passed with little variation my first few weeks in Moši; in planting, building, scheming, sketching landscapes, skinning birds, and drying wild flowers. No troubles as yet overcast my horizon, and if afterwards I was harassed with anxious fears, and worried with intolerable suspense, the memory of those darker days is overborne by the vivid impression I retain of the first and brightest period of my sojourn on Kilima-njaro. This I shall always remember as the most enjoyable time I ever spent in Africa.