A REMARK ABOUT MISSIONS 6i 



boys carrying guns and rifles and pushing a bicycle 

 (it was uphill) ; and lastly a member of the Church 

 Missionary Society, who was able to give me the 

 latest news from Europe, and told me many inter- 

 esting things about the country. It is far from my 

 wish to suggest that I am less in sympathy with one 

 mission than with another ; I was always treated 

 with the utmost kindness by missionaries of every 

 denomination, both when I was with the British 

 Museum Expedition and subsequently, and the 

 splendid work that many of them do must be obvious 

 to every one, but it was impossible to help thinking 

 that one stood a considerably better chance of getting 

 to the root of the matter than did the other. 



The character of the country was changing with 

 almost every mile as we went south ; undulations 

 became steep hills, and valleys and swamps became 

 clear mountain streams. The delight of drinking 

 and washing in pure water instead of in the boiled 

 mud, to which one was beginning to get accustomed, 

 is a thing of which it is difficult to speak calmly. 

 At the Wimi River, a beautiful torrent with steep 

 wooded banks, I came unexpectedly upon a family 

 bathing-party of yellow baboons, of all sizes from 

 that of a mastiff to a small terrier ; they ran about 

 on the rocks and barked in the most alarming 

 manner, and I was not at all sorry that the river was 

 between us. There was something rather mysterious 

 about this road ; the hills we were crossing were 

 unmistakably mountain foot-hills, and the streams 



