146 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



trust. It was told me that when Bushmanland 

 happened to be blest with a few consecutive 

 good seasons, scruples on points of dogma be- 

 came prevalent and the tribe thinned out. But 

 when the inevitable drought recurred, the 

 doubters repented, returned to the forgiving 

 bosom of Mother Church and recommenced, 

 with more or less fervour, the practice of their 

 religious duties. I was shewn one patriarch 

 who, with his numerous family, had three times 

 fallen from grace and had as often been re- 

 ceived back as an erring but repentant sheep. 



Besides Father Simon and the nuns I met 

 only two members of the community who in- 

 terested me. One was an elderly, thickset 

 priest with a dense, brown beard. I found 

 him sitting, in a dingy hut, at a packing-case 

 table. He was smoking an extremely black 

 pipe and reading at an early iyth Century 

 folio of Thomas Aquinas. His person was 

 generally unclean; his coarse, stumpy hands 

 were sickening to look upon. 



The reading was clearly a pretence; from 

 ^ the appearance of the volume I should say it 

 had not been previously opened for a very long 

 time. I felt instinctively that Father Simon, 

 too, knew this, for he addressed a few 

 sentences in French to the reader, speaking 



