NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA 77 



the little office and submits a festered foot for 

 inspection. The solitary steward anoints and 

 binds the wound. A woman lays a charge of 

 theft against another and pleads for justice. 

 Perhaps it is only a broken calabash, but the 

 lonely representative of law and right must un- 

 weave the tangled meshes of evidence through 

 many knots of lies in the search for that truth 

 for which his Mistress stands. 



At times he sallies forth into the great forests, 

 plains and swamps of his division to collect the 

 taxes which his race demands in return for his 

 presence. Wild beasts and wild peoples are his 

 consorts, and when fever seizes him and the 

 grim wings of death hover perilously near, the 

 only nurse to lead him along the narrow path 

 to recovery is a small bottle bearing the symbol 

 " quinine." 



But perhaps that ministering influence has 

 already used up all its ability, and then there is 

 merely a little grave alongside some native path 

 to signify that here a white man found his burden 

 too heavy to carry, and quietly laid it down for 

 other hands to bear. 



If you were to ask his friends and relatives 

 in the land of his birth where he was or what he 

 was doing, they would probably reply; "Oh, 

 M ! Yes, let me see. He is somewhere 

 out in Africa doing something or other. To 

 tell you the truth I can't quite tell you whether 

 he is in Rhodesia or Sierra Leone, but it's some- 

 where in that district, you know ! " Perhaps 

 M. comes home one day — no doubt weakened with 

 sickness, more thoughtful, less communicative 

 than when his health was toasted at the farewell 

 dinner, and his old friends told him that he was a 



