144 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



immeasurably older and less changeful. So far 

 as I could gather, the personnel consisted of 

 three priests, four lay-brothers and five nuns. 

 It was to those women that my pity went out; 

 they were so pallid, so debilitated, so incon- 

 gruous with their surroundings. As they 

 flitted silently about, busied with hospitable 

 service towards the guests, their hands looked 

 like faded leaves. How the conventual habit, 

 albeit the material had been lightened to 

 accord with local conditions, must have 

 weighed them down. The low-roofed, livid- 

 grey brick building in which they lived must 

 have got heated through and through as Father 

 Simon's dwelling did. One of those nuns had, 

 so I was told, lost her reason and was shortly 

 to be removed. Their lot must have been one 

 of continuous martyrdom. 



Father Simon was suave in manner; I could 

 judge him to be shrewd and clear-headed; 

 evidently he was a man of affairs. His pallor 

 was apparently congenital ; it by no means sug- 

 gested physical weakness. Salamander-like, 

 he had habituated himself to the torrid climate. 

 Like an Arab chief he ruled his clan of about 

 two hundred subjects. This was as mixed a 

 lot of human beings as one would find any- 

 where even in South Africa, that land of 



