VIVI TO ISANGILA. 15 
steaming hot cup of coffee ready. Then, when I had 
hollowed out a round space in the centre of the tent, and 
filled it with red-hot wood ashes, which diffused a grateful - 
sense of warmth and dryness, and at the same time routed 
the many insects, and when my tent was firmly shut 
against the rain, and I had sat down to drink my coffee 
and read some old newspapers, my feeling of discontent 
had completely vanished, and I passed a not unpleasant 
evening writing and reading. It is thus, by taking a little 
trouble to make oneself comfortable under unpromising — 
circumstances, that one may alleviate many African dis- 
agreeables, and avoid much ill-health. | 
But the next morning was prepared for us a still harder 
trial. Each broad blade of grass was charged with huge 
raindrops, and as we pushed through their interlacing 
stems they showered on us a generous tribute of water. 
In five minutes I was wet through, and with heavy cling- 
ing clothes had to pass on through the wet vegetation, the 
water from the leaves “swishing” on me as I went. 
Then followed worse still. The clayey path became inter- 
spersed with muddy pools, and soon it was a series of 
black morasses, connected by an occasional isthmus. 
Now, at last, the track frankly recognised the hypocrisy 
of pretending to be a path at all, and for four miles re- 
velled in a wide marsh. This I had to cross on the 
shoulders of Faraji, who, if he had ever heard recited in 
the cafés of Zanzibar the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, 
must have thought that I strongly resembled the “Old 
Man of the Sea,” by the firm way in which I clung to his 
stout shoulders. However, he made little of his burden, 
and strode and splashed on through water and mud and 
sharp reeds, till at length, after the wearisome march, 
came a little sandy tract, then clear water, and finally the 
solid earth reasserted itself. The evil genius must evi- 
dently have regarded this as his severest trial, for the 
water in parts reached to the chest of the tall Zanzibaris, 
and the footing was slimy and treacherous. Perhaps he 
was watching our difficulties under the form of one of 
those weird, uncanny marsh-birds which ever and anon 
