BISHOP GEYER i8i 



3 A.M., or any hour, to find Wahbi Eff. superintending 

 the stoking, &c. 



Fit ? there were none so fit as we. There is no- 

 thing hke being busy and interested to keep one fit in 

 the tropics. Wahbi Eff. was never sick while with me, 

 though both before my arrival and after my departure 

 he suffered from malaria, work being necessarily at a 

 standstill. 



My first white visitor was Bishop Geyer. He 

 was looking for a fresh field of missionary enter- 

 prise. I well remember the dates he was with me, 

 for he celebrated Mass here on St. Joseph's Feast 

 (19th March). He travels at a wonderful rate, and 

 lives like a native, with no servants to get things ready 

 at halts, &c. Low be it spoken, I think he enjoys 

 this life far more than he would pacing the stately 

 corridors of the Vatican, apart from the good he thinks 

 his mission does. 



It happened that at the time the principal sultans 

 of the district were at Dem Zubeir, so they were intro- 

 duced to him, and he later wrote that they made things 

 easy for him in his tour round the country. Before 

 starting north he made a few days' trip due west, and 

 stood happy on the crest of the Nile-Congo watershed. 



Scarcely was he gone when the President of the 

 recruiting Commission arrived, preceded by two 

 enormous flags, and followed by an escort of — five 

 men ! He stayed a few days with me, and managed 

 to get one recruit — a man discharged for blindness 

 from the Jehadia. Not knowing that the civil autho- 

 rities had scoffed at the idea of getting recruits in the 



