MISSIONARIES 
*93 
natural history research, or merely for the sake of exploration or sport. You 
have just quitted the slightly civilised coast-belt for the little known and 
savage interior, and you may have sickened with the first touch of fever. With 
all the enthusiasm for exploration which leads most white men into this un¬ 
healthy but fascinating continent, you feel temporarily depressed and saddened 
at the snapping of all ties which bind you to the world of culture and comfort: 
your new tent is leaky and lets in the rain, or it fails to mitigate the blazing 
heat of noontide; your untried cook cannot at once acquire the art of pro¬ 
ducing a decent meal amid the many difficulties of camp life ; you have long 
ceased to eat bread, or the fragments of mouldy toast that may be served up 
to you are piteous relics of the pleasant sojourn at some relatively civilised 
town on the coast whence you started. 
Or, it may be, the circumstances under which you are travelling are 
somewhat different. You are at the end of some great journey, some expedi¬ 
tion which has had its moments of exhilarating success, of wonderful discovery, 
but now the excitement is over and is succeeded by a dull apathy that is almost 
despair: you no longer anticipate with a joy that can scarcely be outwardly 
repressed the pleasures which are about to reward your months of toil, privation 
and danger—the first night’s sleep in a comfortable and spacious bed, the 
first well-cooked meal into which you will crowd all your favourite delicacies, 
the first good concert or theatre you will attend ; you are weary of running 
over in your mind the public dinners that may be given to you or the praises 
of scientific societies which will reward your discoveries ; you merely confine 
yourself to reflecting dully on the probabilities of reaching your destination 
alive and of doubting whether under any circumstances, and especially the 
present ones, life is worth living. In either case, whether your work lies 
behind you, finished, or before you, to be accomplished, you jog along the 
narrow winding path, tired, alone, heart-sick, home-sick, your sore and weary 
feet tripping over stocks and stones, your aching eyes fixed on the ground, 
seeing nothing, your face scorched with the hot wind, your hands scratched 
with the grass blades that have to be continually pushed aside in your dogged 
progress. Perhaps even you may be enduring worse discomfort, you may be 
drenched to the skin—macintosh notwithstanding—in some torrential downpour; 
and overweighted with your heavy, streaming rain-coat, you stagger along half 
blindly through slushy mud and soaked vegetation. Then you hear your guide 
saying to someone that he recognises the district, that the white man’s house is 
near at hand. “What white man?” you ask apathetically, too weary to show 
an interest in anything. “ People of the Mission,” the guide replies, and then 
if you only know of this modern type of evangelist by tradition you will smile 
bitterly and say to yourself, “Oh, a missionary! H’m, I don’t feel much in 
a mood to pray or sing hymns just now! ” Then you continue plodding on 
in stupid resignation to whatever fate awaits you. 
I will suppose, to make this picture more effective, that it is now late 
afternoon. The sun—if it is the sun that has chiefly troubled you during 
the day’s march—is at last sinking behind an imposing clump of forest trees, 
and the fierce heat of noon is beginning to be tempered by the rising breeze. 
Or the murky rain clouds are drifting away in ragged, piled up masses to 
the east, leaving a large space of the western heavens clear ; and this expanse 
of open sky has become a pale lemon-yellow through the diffused misty glory 
of the declining sun. The surrounding country has a more pleasing appear¬ 
ance. Here and there in the distance are bright green and yellow patches 
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