BRITISH EAST AFRICA 223 



glowing purity as a thing apart. To no man can any 

 country, however fair, stand in the same relation as 

 his native land. Its woods may be clothed in lovelier 

 shades of green, its plains stretch limitless on every 

 hand. The water in its streams may run with a 

 clearer lustre, and its hills raise higher tops toward 

 the heavens. It is all in vain. The wanderer gazes 

 at it, his depths unmoved, and turns to humbler scenes 

 about which some fond association lingers, with the 

 greeting he would give to a dearly loved friend. So 

 I thought as I stood there. And yet one element 

 it held which beautiful Nature always gives to a 

 worshipper, something of that Peace which the world 

 cannot give. 



As I looked, for some reason which I cannot quite 

 explain, I went back to the days of my boyhood, 

 when my greatest joy was to sit at my mother's knee 

 and to listen entranced to the doings of Tom and the 

 Water Babies ; when never even in my dreams did 

 the Princess come with a half-smile playing about her 

 lips to trouble me, and the world seemed to lie within 

 the wooded slopes of a little Highland glen. 



