Chap. XII. NOCTURNAL REFLECTIONS. 237 



number was insufficient, and tliree of m}^ people had 

 the skin worn off their backs on tlie march from 

 Mayolo. To-night the air was colder than I ever 

 recollect to have found it in Western Africa. The 

 sky was cloudless but hazy — as, indeed, it often is 

 in the interior, in the clearest weather during the 

 dry season — a reddish halo surrounded the moon. I 

 sat up as usual to take lunar distances and altitudes 

 of stars. Indeed, I seldom retire before one a.m., 

 and enjoy the silent nights, when the hubbub and 

 torment of a crowd of whimsical, restless savages 

 are stilled by sleep. I sometimes stretched myself on 

 the ground after the work was done, and enjoyed 

 the contemplation of the starry heavens, thinking of 

 the far-off northern land, lying under constellations 

 so different from these of the southern hemisphere. 

 My thoughts would wander to my distant fiiends 

 in Europe and North America, and my eyes would 

 fill with tears when I dwelt on the many acts of 

 kindness I had received from them. Did they now 

 think of the poor lonely traveller working out his 

 mission amidst savages in the heart of Africa ! 



I was not always so solitary in taking my nightly 

 observations, for sometimes one or other of my men 

 or Mayolo would stand by me. Of course I could 

 never make them comprehend what I was doing. 

 Sometimes I used to be amused by their ideas about 

 the heavenly bodies. Like all other remarkable 

 natural objects, they are the subjects of whimsical 

 myths amongst them. According to them, the sun 

 and moon are of the same age, but the sun brings 

 daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness, 



