THE TRIALS O^ MONOTONY 101 



commandants have, without question, ample leisure 

 which might be most profitably employed in the 

 study of languages, of native questions, and, as I 

 have said, in the classification and collection of 

 specimens of many branches of natural history. 

 There can be no doubt that, in the absence of some 

 such distraction or amusement, the lives these men 

 lead may become unhealthy in the extreme, both 

 from a physical and moral point of view. There 

 is nothing in the shape of public opinion to restrain 

 them from habits which they would probably shrink 

 from contracting in surroundings which brought 

 them into daily contact with their fellow-country- 

 men and women ; and thus connections are formed 

 which are in many cases (if not in most) the direct 

 outcome of lonely and, it may be, uncongenial 

 surroundings, added perhaps to a certain slackness 

 into which men who are far removed from the 

 influence of public opinion are at times apt to fall. 

 Personally I do not think that these intimacies 

 with the daughters of the land of the European's 

 adoption arise usually from any preconceived de- 

 termination to give rein to an innate vicious 

 propensity ; I prefer to regard them as the outcome 

 of the almost pathetic yearnings of the isolated 

 individual for the intimate society of some person, 

 of no matter what colour, within whose mind he 

 may, after a time, succeed in sowing the seeds of 

 that inestimable consolation and blessing which we 

 call sympathy. 



Let me endeavour to give an inadequate pen- 

 picture of the abode and surroundings of a 

 Zambezian sub-district officer or commandant. 



