378 



ORIGINAL PLAN. 



had acquired a curious taste for tlie youngest of 

 meat, preferring it even when unborn. He also 

 attempted to travel barefooted, but this will 

 almost always prove a failure to men who have 

 not begun it in early life. His system of living 

 was good : as the late Lord Palmerston ad- 

 vised, he ate much, drank little, and did not 

 smoke. 



The object of this economy was to carry out 

 a project which he had matured in 1849, after 

 tlie expiration of the Panjab campaign. Of his 

 three years' furlough he proposed to employ two 

 in collecting animals whilst marching through 

 Eastern Africa, north of the Line, with the third 

 to be spent in ease and rest at home. The idea 

 of ' striking the Nile at its head, and then sailing 

 down that river to Egypt,' was altogether an 

 after-thought, and similarly his knowledge of 

 ' E/uppell and others ' was the result of far 

 later application. I well remember at Aden his 

 astonishment at my proposing so improbable a 

 scheme as marching overland to the Nile sources. 

 But he had seen in maps the mythical ' Moun- 

 tains of the Moon,' which twenty years ago used 

 to span Africa from east to west, a huge black 

 caterpillar upon a white leaf, and he determined 

 that they would ' in all probability harbour wild 



