BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
196 
over the table and are quite satisfied with your present lot. There is, for 
instance, to open the repast, a tureen of good chicken soup; and a cold pigeon 
pie, a rolled tongue, sardines, and boiled eggs are other items. There 
are dishes of home-grown potatoes baked in their skins, and golden slices of 
fried plantain. A superb pineapple imparts its fragrance to the mingled 
odours of the steaming tea and the savoury broth. Little glass dishes of 
luscious jams and sweet biscuits fill up spare gaps in between the pieces de 
resistance , and it is probable that a few bright flowers in a slender vase give 
a grace to the outspread meal which clearly indicates feminine supervision. 
When your thoughts and your gaze are wandering thus, you see your hostess 
suddenly pause in the tea-outpouring, and lower her head and clasp her hands, 
while your host, who has once or twice endeavoured to arrest your attention, 
rises somewhat bashfully and pronounces a brief benediction on the repast. 
Then, this duty over, he serves and carves and cuts with a will. If you are 
a man of any tact, and desire to administer a little harmless flattery to your 
kind hosts, you will compliment your hostess on her delicious tea. Then 
she will tell you of the difficulties which attend the procuring of fresh milk 
in Africa, and of how, in her case, these difficulties have been met and 
conquered. She will enumerate her nanny-goats, and describe the vagaries 
of her half-wild cow. And you must especially dwell on the excellence 
of the cold pigeon-pie. This will no doubt elicit from your hostess the 
avowal—with a little blushing—that she herself made it. Her husband shot 
the pretty green fruit-pigeons—“ poor little things! it seems a shame, doesn’t 
it ? ”—and she made the pie-crust. “ You know the native girls can learn to 
cook most things, but they never can be taught to make pastry, so I always 
go into the kitchen and do that myself.” 
When the meal is over, you are doubtless made to take the easiest chair, 
which is drawn up to the open brick fire - place, where fragrant logs are 
burning. You really feel permeated with comfort, while gratitude for the 
kindness shown you lends, or ought to lend, a brighter look to your eyes 
and a more sympathetic tone to your voice. The missionary’s wife has 
taken up some needlework to occupy her fingers. Her husband, out of 
politeness, is sitting idle with his hands before him, trying to make con¬ 
versation ; but if you question him adroitly, you will soon find out that he 
has some hobby that he rides, some favourite pursuit that he follows in his 
leisure time. Perhaps it is the study of the native language; and on your 
expressing an encouraging interest, he will bring out delightedly his bulky 
manuscript vocabularies and chatter to you of prefixes and suffixes and 
infixes, of clicks and nasals, guttural - labials, aspirated sibilants, and faucal 
sounds—all the cacophony of barbarous tongues. Or you will discover that 
his passion is entomology, and a very little persuasion will induce him to 
open his boxes and tins, redolent of camphor, and to fetch down from his 
study-shelves his spirit-jars, and to display before your somewhat wearied 
gaze a bewildering collection of insect forms — beetles big as mice, and 
gorgeously clad in golden-green and chestnut-brown, tiny jewel-like beetles 
caught in the calyces of orchids, fantastic longicorns, clumsy scarabs, lovely 
chafers, brilliant cantharides, all the coleopterous forms of the surrounding 
district. He will recall your wandering attention to a marvellous mantis, 
mimicking a large green leaf to perfection, or assuming the form and 
appearance of a dry branching twig. He will show you butterflies from the 
forest which, when their wings are folded, can scarcely be distinguished 
