130 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



progress towards a complete recovery of health from 

 the days and nights spent in the canoe and upon 

 the mud of the Tanganyika Lake. Perhaps mind 

 had also acted upon matter; the object of my 

 mission was now effected, and this thought enabled 

 me to cast off the burden of grinding care with which 

 the imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely 

 laden me. 



The rainy monsoon broke up on the 14th May, the 

 day after my return to Kawele, and once more, after 

 six months of incessant storm-wind and rain, clouds 

 and mists, we had fine, cool mornings, clear warm sun, 

 and deliciously cold nights. The climate became truly 

 enjoyable, but the scenery somewhat lost its earlier 

 attractions. The faultless, regular, and uniform beauty, 

 and the deep stillness of this evergreen land did not 

 fail to produce that strange, inexplicable melancholy of 

 which most travellers in tropical countries complain. 

 In this Nature all is beautiful that meets the eye, all is 

 soft that affects the senses ; but she is a Siren whose 

 pleasures soon pall upon the enjoyer. The mind, en- 

 feebled perhaps by an enervating climate, is fatigued 

 and wearied by the monotony of the charms which 

 haunt it ; cloyed with costly fare, it sighs for the rare 

 simplicity of the desert. I have never felt this sadness 

 in Egypt and Arabia, and was never without it in 

 India and Zanzibar. 



Our outfit, as I have observed, had been reduced to a 

 minimum. Not a word from Snay bin Amir, my agent 

 at Kazeh, had arrived in reply to my many missives, 

 and old Want began to stare at us with the stare 

 peremptory. " Wealth," say the Arabs, " hath one 

 devil, poverty a dozen," and nowhere might a caravan 

 more easily starve than in rich and fertile Central 



