Solitude and Scenery 



always by an armed escort of Soudanese and natives 

 to guard against surprise, is inserted. 



The perfect Central African scenery, the distant 

 volcanoes, the picturesque lakes, the native villages 

 with their cultivation, all conspire to impart an 

 added charm to your afternoon's walk ; while 

 you have but to wander over the hills, at the 

 back of the camp, and dip down into these 

 mysterious valleys, to encounter a feeling of lone- 

 liness, majestic and inexplicable, though typically 

 African. This feeling may appear to some un- 

 pleasant. To my mind it is, on the contrary, 

 irresistibly attractive. It is a foible of my character 

 perhaps, or may be that, having always been 

 accustomed to live in a crowd, the sensational change 

 of finding myself alone is alluring. It has for me an 

 undeniable charm ; the quaint feeling of being in the 

 midst of the practically unknown, accompanied by no 

 other companion than Nature. To gaze on quaint 

 shaped hills, to wonder how they came to be there, 

 whether any human being has ever been up them, or 

 any white man ever seen them; to notice the shapes 

 of the trees, to marvel at the height of the grasses, the 

 wildness of the undergrowth, the striking brightness 

 of the green patches at the bottoms of the valleys 

 compared with the brownness of the watersheds 

 above ; all these thoughts, crowding into your mind, 

 afford you ample room for silent cogitation, as you sit 

 and wonder, surrounded by the peace and stillness of 

 the tropics. The other officers had again gone 

 out to interview the Belgians. I heard that their 



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