“HALCYON DAYS.”
About a month was spent in the calm and contemplative occupations
described in the last chapter.
[Illustration:
A CORNER OF OUR SETTLEMENT.
To face page 143.
]
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.
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration:
KILIMA-NJARO SEEN FROM ABOVE MOŠI (“PALMS AND SNOW”).
To face page 152.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 40.—Mkindu Palm.
]
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.
[Illustration:
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.)
[Illustration:
Fig. 42.—Čaga Storehouse and Dwelling.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 43.—The Captive.
]
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.