146 Wanderings in Eastern Africa. 
and threes — this is one of your opportunities. Some- 
times they listen to you out of mere courtesy. Hoping 
to please you, they pay you, too, all manne4' of com- 
pliments ; but always conclude by asking you to give 
them something as a reward for their good behaviour. 
If you refuse they take their departure in high 
dudgeon. The next time you meetthem they will do 
anything to evade listening to such profitless talka- 
tion. In order to bring ourselves in contact with them 
we are obliged to visit them in their homes, follow 
them to their plantations, and make our way to their 
most secluded haunts. Sometimes we have walked 
from morning till night, under a burning sun, going 
from hut to hut, plantation to plantation, palm grove 
to palm grove, in order to bring to bear upon them 
the truth as it is in Jesus." The circumstances 
under which we find the people are very unfavourable 
to the object w^e have in view. As a rule they are 
pre-occupied. Some will be engaged in their *'minda" 
(plantations) ; others about their household occupa- 
tions ; others will be in their cups, deeply absorbed 
in the worship of Bacchus ; others will be found 
feasting their friends ; and others exciting themselves 
with some sort of heathenish celebration — drumming, 
dancing, and song-singing, etc. — which unfits them 
altogether for listening to such matters as those 
of which we have to speak. We meet with rebuffs 
innumerable, not only with the callousness and in- 
difference of the people, but often with downright 
ridicule, scorn, and contempt. Before you can speak 
the language correctly and fluently this is especially 
the case. 
But even when you have acquired a pretty good 
