A RESIDENCE AT JUJA 



started off afoot for Juja. The whole lot cost us 

 about what we would pay one Chinaman on the 

 Pacific Coast. 



Next day we ourselves drove out in the mule 

 buckboard. The rains were on, and the road was 

 very muddy. After the vital tropical fashion the 

 grass was springing tall in the natural meadows and 

 on the plains and the brief-lived white lilies and an 

 abundance of ground flowers washed the slopes with 

 colour. Beneath the grass covering, the entire sur- 

 face of the ground was an inch or so deep in water. 

 This was always most surprising, for, apparently, the 

 whole country should have been high and dry. 

 Certainly its level was that of a plateau rather than 

 a bottom land; so that one seemed always to be 

 travelling at an elevation. Nevertheless walking or 

 riding we were continually splashing, and the only 

 dry going outside the occasional rare "islands" of 

 the slight undulations we found near the very edge 

 of the bluffs above the rivers. There the drainage 

 seemed sufficient to carry off the excess. Elsewhere 

 the hardpan or bedrock must have been excep- 

 tionally level and near the top of the ground. 



Nothing nor nobody seemed to mind this much. 

 The game splashed around merrily, cropping at the 

 tall grass; the natives slopped indifferently, and we 

 ourselves soon became so accustomed to two or 



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