40 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
passed much like another, save that on Sundays no work 
was done, and an air of decorous dulness pervaded every- 
thing. When I stayed at Vivi it was generally to obtain 
a temporary rest, and therefore I led principally an 
indoor life and devoted myself to arranging the facts I 
had already collected in divers expeditions. My time 
_ passed much as follows. In the early morning, about six, 
my Zanzibari servant would come into my room with a 
tray of light breakfast—coffee, bread and butter, sardines, — 
&e. I Anica over this meal oe one of the hariieen ae 
fifty books of the station library, and then sauntered out 
in pyjamas to the shower-bath just outside the house, and 
after refreshing myself with a good douche, I dressed 
and took a walk to botanise or sketch. At noon we all 
met at breakfast—or lunch—which was laid on the long 
table in the nearly open-air dining-room I have already 
mentioned. This meal generally began with soup, and 
then there would follow roast meat and boiled, the flesh 
of sheep, goat, pig, or an occasional antelope; chicken, 
cooked in different ways, curry, and all the most dazzling 
show that tinned-meats could offer—not very brilliant or 
toothsome these latter it must be owned—and I myself 
always preferred plain roast goat, however tough, to the 
insipid contents of a tin, notwithstanding the attractive | 
title it might bear in the menu. 
Lisbon wine and Bordeaux were always on the table, 
and occasionally beer. Breakfast wound up with coffee 
and biscuits, and the meal finished, every one separated 
to pass away the hot hours of the day either in siesta or 
reading beneath the cool verandah. This was the silent 
hour, when scarcely even a Zanzibari was seen stirring, 
and where the European perspired tranquilly in pyjamas. 
About four, afternoon tea was about, or afternoon coffee 
or chocolate, as you preferred it. It was generally made 
separately for you by your own “boy,” and either drunk 
in one’s own room, or enjoyed amid a group of gossipers 
in the common sitting-room. Then work began again in 
earnest. The pickaxes of the road-makers, the hammering 
from the carpenter's shop, the cries of the Kruboys 
