272 the traveller's retrospect. 



friends. He was so fatigued that he could not sleep, and his 

 mind naturally wandered back over /the long and tedious jour- 

 ney, with its strange and wonderful scenery, its wild associates, 

 and its wealth of singular incidents. There were the lofty 

 pillars of Pungo Andongo towering grandly on the other bor- 

 der like the monuments of old forgotten Titanic heroes. There 

 was the wonderful valley of the Quango, a hundred miles wide, 

 with its walls a thousand feet high. Then came in freshly on 

 his mind the weariness and anxiety of sickness and detentions 

 and petty strifes. The western water-shed next absorbed his 

 thought ; the floating along the Leeba and the Leeambye, and 

 the " welcome home " so cordially extended by the Makololo. 

 Then the months of loving labor in the word of Christ, and the 

 eager watching for the slightest evidences of good accomplished. 

 Sometimes he seemed to be wandering again in the strange 

 labyrinth of rivers which flow about through the remarkable 

 fissures of the great interior country so unnaturally. In the 

 midst of these the wild and grand and lovely falls of the Zam- 

 besi burst anew on his delighted vision. The splendid hills 

 and lofty ranges, with their beautiful valleys and teeming herds 

 and stories of war and wrong, succeed in turn. Then the gorge 

 of the Kafue. And the Zambesi again, a thousand yards wide. 

 Amid all these scenes, the dark, untaught, uncared-for human 

 inhabitants were seen dragging about the fetters of their super- 

 stitions ; unconsciously, indeed, but wearily. He seemed to 

 hear their childish laughter ringing out in the midst of wicked 

 sports, or their mournful cries of sorrow on account of the 

 shadow of death. It was no wonder ; he had heard them so 

 often. The sigh for peace, for quiet, sweet rest : that was 

 clearer in his thoughts than all else. Then ardent hope was 

 busy establishing mission stations all over the land, and his 

 prayer of faith would almost become thanksgiving as he imag- 

 ined the redemption of Africa, and seemed to gaze on its lovely 

 valleys and mountain ranges, all clothed with the evidences of a 

 Christian civilization, and seemed to hear the songs of praise 

 floating out of the renewed heart of the continent so many ages 

 lost in darkness and sin ; floating along the rivers, until the sea 

 was burdened with words of love and gratitude from Africa to 

 the world., and all its murmurings were changed to shouts of 



