INTRODUCTORY 15 



companionship of a dog was preferable. Physically a bigf 

 and muscular race, I frankly detest the lot. 



CLIMATE AND HEALTH. Seeing that the Sudan lies 

 wholly within the Tropic of Cancer and largely within the 

 Torrid Zone, its climate is necessarily sultry to put it 

 mildly. We can have at home no conception of such 

 degrees of heat. Yet one reads extravaganzas eulogising 

 the winter climate of Sudan as comparable with that of 

 an English summer. Such pretensions can only lead to 

 misconception and disappointment. When at recurring 

 intervals the thermometer in London rises for a day or 

 two a trifle above 80, the newspapers go into hysterics ; 

 but such a temperature in the Sudan would be welcomed 

 as coolness itself! In Khartoum the shade-temperature, 

 even in winter, must average nearer 100, while 90 

 is regarded as comfortable. l 



In the highlands of British East Africa, though they 

 lie actually under the Equator, I never once remember 

 a shade - temperature of 100, whether in summer or 

 winter. Those highlands, however, have an altitude 

 ranging from 5000 to 8000 feet and upwards above sea- 

 level ; whereas Khartoum and the whole Nilotic plain 

 only claim an elevation of some 1250 feet. This explains 

 the greater relative heat a heat so dry that a slice of 

 bread turns into toast ere you have time to eat it. 



In tropical Africa intense heat should of course be 

 taken without saying ; but it would be idle to ignore it, 

 or the many other minor inconveniences incidental to the 

 Torrid Zone. None of these things neither heat nor the 

 rest weigh with me one grain in the balance as against 

 the countervailing joys ; and equally the collateral 

 benefits derived from each African sojourn. That latter 



1 Doubtless thermometrical readings have been registered with meticulous 

 precision and quite probably may contradict these figures. But I have not 

 studied them, for, in my view, they afford no really sound criterion of the 

 actual suffering endured. All sorts of influences such as sun-glare, " actinic 

 rays," and the like (of which I know nothing), combine to affect the issue 

 far more than the mere degrees of Fahrenheit. 



