*> The Spell of the Elelescho 



was but a few days since the rebel Wakamassia hillmen 

 were a source of danger to us, and nightly precautions 

 are not yet forgotten. The moonbeams flicker ghost-like 

 over the lake. Night-jars give forth their songs close to 

 the camp all round us. Strange sounds and cries ring- 

 out from the throats of the waterfowl on the lake margins, 

 and not far away one hears the snorting of the hippopotami. 

 Jackals and spotted hyenas prowl round the camp, 

 betraying themselves by their voices. The hyena's howl 

 and jackal's wailing bark mingle strangely with the deep 

 bass note of a bull-hippopotamus. Here in the wilderness 

 there is hardly any sound that is louder than the mighty 

 voice of these giants of the water. 1 



A strange feeling came over me. Amid all the ever- 

 varying sensations of the last year my capacity for 

 enjoyment, my sensitiveness to outside impressions, had 

 been developed and enhanced. A short time since I was 

 between life and death, struggling with the treacherous 

 infection of fever. Now I was well. I was breathing 

 the air some three thousand feet higher than the place 

 where I lay ill near Victoria Xyanza. 1 was again in a 

 region whose vast volcanic solitudes contrasted strongly 

 with its abundance of highly developed organic life, and 

 exercised a strange influence upon me. 



Is there such a place as Europe ? Is it possible that 

 thousands of miles away there is a centre of civilisation 



1 The pachyderms seem to feel no ill effects from the natron-bearing 

 water ; but for men the water of the lake -at least, near my camp proved 

 very unpleasant. Our drinking water was obtained from a small marsh 

 near the shore of the lake. 



