634 
THE GRAPHIC 
June 20, 1885 
comfort is sought. Of course this applies more to the resident 
than to the traveller, who cannot stay long enough in a place to 
develop its resources. 
Firstly, there is a nice snowy cloth spread over the table, then the 
silver is bright, and the enamelled iron plates are clean, all details 
which are due to a little supervision over servants’ 
work. The grateful steam of coffee comes from a 
pretty cafetiire, a little white jug contains hot milk 
from my own cow, there is a pat of fresh butter of 
our own making lying in a cool green leaf, a nicely- 
baked loaf, made from maize-flour and eggs (and in 
a long parenthesis I might explain that this flour is of 
our own grinding and sifting, and the eggs are from 
our own poultry), and lastly, there are grilled kid¬ 
neys from a sheep we killed yesterday, fried bananas 
as an entremet, and a bowl of honey. 
Of all these delicacies, only coffee and sugar are 
extraneous, so that I thus hope to show you how 
much comfort and good living may be extracted even 
from savage Africa. 
When the meal is finished I set out to visit my 
plantations. They are situated about a half-mile from 
my house. The walk thither takes you along the 
little stream which supplies a canal, or—to use a 
more expressive Cornish word—a“leat”of water 
to our settlement, and the ground has been cleared 
and planted near the water-side, so that irrigation 
is easy. Here is working Kadu Stanley, a bright, 
willing, Uganda boy, given by King Mtesa of 
Uganda to Stanley when he visited that monarch in 
1876. Kadu has sojourned several years on the 
Congo, and after his return to Zanzibar has taken 
service with me. I have made him head-gardener. 
Here are planted all the seeds I have brought 
from England, together with potatoes, onions, &c., 
brought from Zanzibar, and many native vegetables 
as well. Already, after a month or six weeks, the 
growth is surprising. Radishes are still in good con¬ 
dition for eating, the mustard and cress have run to 
seed, turnips are nearly ready, carrots and cucumbers 
are coming up, and sticks have been already placed 
in long rows for the peas and beans. The purpl 
green shoots of the potatoes are springing up 
wherever “ eyes ” have been planted, some of the 
onions are in flower. The only recalcitrant thing is 
spinach, which for some reason will not flourish here. 
I leave Kadu and go onwards up the valley, 
sketch-book under my arm, and my small bird-gun 
in my hand. Across the stream there flits a 
large kingfisher, grey and rufous-brown and verditer-blue, with 
red beak. Like the real aboriginal kingfisher he feeds only 
on insects, as there are no fish in these streams. Fishing has 
been quite an after-thought with the kingfishers, and is a pastime by 
no means shared by all the members of the group. Many 
Australian species, the halcyon of the Cape Verde Islands, and this 
common East African halcyon found on Kilma-njaro never attempt 
to catch fish, even though they be near streams well-stocked with 
piscine prey, but content themselves with the variety of insects that 
haunt the water-side. I shoot this kingfisher just to identify him, 
and afterwards when his little stomach is opened the carapaces of 
beetles and remains of grasshoppers are found within. 
Now the stream I am ascending becomes two streamlets, and the 
valley bifurcates into two ravines, while the broad slope of a hill 
faces me, so I leave the pleasant path along the waterside and toil 
up the clayey ascent. But when I have reached the level crest of 
this bracken-covered height, I slip into a smooth and level track, 
winding along between low hedges of strychnia and dracoena, and 
giving off many side turnings which lead to native compounds and 
enclosures. Several maidens pass me shyly, going to market with 
bananas or neat baskets of millet meal or bags of Indian corn. 
Some of the bolder, who have perhaps met me before in the market¬ 
place or at Mandara’s, give me the Chaga greeting, “Mbui'a” 
(friend), to which I heartily reply “Mbui'a, mbu'ia.” How strange 
it is ! In all probability many of these Chaga girls have never seen 
me or any other white man before ; yet we meet in a lane suddenly, 
and beyond a somewhat timid shrinking to one side there is no fear 
and no surprise exhibited. Each after the formal greeting wends 
his or her way tranquilly. And yet, to imagine a similar contrast, 
suppose some English country girls—say in the most rural depths of 
Somersetshire—were suddenly to come upon a naked black man 
striding along a leafy lane, armed with spear and shield, and decked 
with strange adornments, necklaces of human teeth, and such like, 
would they not in all probability shriek for help, or giggle convul¬ 
sively, or in some obtrusive fashion betray their amazement. Yet 
these African maidens, to whom I, clothed where they are accus - 
tomed to utter nakedness, with aneroid hanging round my neck, 
sketch-book under my arm, and gun in hand, suddenly appear, 
merely give me a modest greeting and a shy look, and quietly 
pursue their way. 
After a further ascent I arrive on the summit of a rounded hill 
which considerably o’ertops its fellows for miles round, and offers 
views of unexampled magnificence in all this lovely country. To 
the north, without a single fleck of intervening cloud, rises Kilima¬ 
njaro, .the whole central ridge and both the peaks completely visible. 
The eye first rests irresistibly on the splendid snowy dome of 
Kibo, absolute in whiteness under the glare of the vertical sun, 
with a few faint purplish blots, like the crater-shadows on the moon’s 
face, coming out where the bare rock breaks through the snow, and 
VIEW OF MANDARA S VILLAGE FROM KITIMBIRIU 
then in the few hollows, gaps, or crevasses, tender cool shadows of 
pale blue break somewhat the dazzling effect of unsullied white. 
Below the snow cap of 
Kibo lies a 
of purple moorland, 
broken up dimly into 
ravines, cliffs, hillocks, 
and ridges by shadows 
of deeper tint, but 
seen with the eyes 
half shut seeming a band of purple 
colour merging into a colder bluish 
tint where it reaches the distant snow, 
and becoming darker and sombrer where it 
mingles with the middle distance 
of dark green forest. To the 
left of Kibo a rounded descent 
of the mountain-mass stretches 
down with some few jags and undu¬ 
lations till it passes away into the 
far off plain, and to the right 
of the snowy dome a ridge nearly horizontal reaches to the 
sister and minor peak, the jagged Kimawenzi, which has merely 
patches and streaks of snow resting amid its strange black peaks 
and pinnacles. The background to the entire scene is a sky of 
intense blue which is almost free from cloud save for a few vapourous 
cumuli lying behind the centre ridge of the mountain. In the middle 
distance are grandly swelling rolling hills, magni¬ 
ficently wooded with, in some cases, a forest growth 
so uniform that, looked down on from a height, its 
surface is like rich green velvet pile. Here and 
there, but rarely, on the hill sides there are open 
patches of land, covered with short turf or bracken. 
These offer, by the side of the darker forest, tracts of 
lovely grass green colour, almost unrepresentable in 
pigment, from the fact that in water colours or oil 
there is no plain tint, or combination of tints, that 
will exactly give it, or in which any permanency can 
be hoped for. From the matrix of one or two of 
the nearer hills springs gush forth and flow through 
ever deepening ravines with musical clamour, though 
their course and their birthplace can only be con¬ 
jectured at a distance from the greater luxuriance 
of the forest which they provoke. In the foreground 
I look upon the descending northern slope of the great 
hill from whose summit this unexampled view is 
obtained, and here there is an intricate mass of low 
forest, principally composed of the Mkindu palm (I 
think belonging to the genus Raphia) mixed with 
indiscriminate shrubs, many of them overgrown with 
parasitic cucurbits and loranthuses. This palm is the 
only member of the order I have ever found growing 
on the slopes of Kilima-njaro. In the plain below 
there are several others, the Hyphcene thebdica, or 
branching palm, the “ Mwale ” (another species of 
Raphia ), and the Borassus, but I have never seen 
any of these on the mountain. 
Having worked industriously at my sketch, and 
shot three sun birds who were hovering round the 
teazle-like flowers of a labiate plant in my vicinity, 
I now begin to think of returning homeward, for 
lunch time is approaching, and, besides, the monarch 
of mountains has begun to weary of his condescen¬ 
sion, he thinks I have stared at him enough, and he 
is wreathing light fleecy clouds round his august fea¬ 
tures as a signal that the interview is at an end. So I 
gather up my sketching materials, pop the sunbirds 
into a roll of wadding in my carnassiere, and stroll 
homeward through the red lanes bordered with dra¬ 
caenas, aloes, strychnia, and bramble, the latter covered 
with delicious blackberries, and the strychnia, which 
is semi-cultivated by the natives, with tiny yellow fruit exactly 
resembling miniature oranges, though scarcely larger than big peas. 
These are good to the taste, and, according to the natives, whole¬ 
some to eat, though in some way I connect them with ideas of 
poisons, and never largely indulge in their consumption. As I near 
my settlement I hear a great clamour of tongues, and find a market 
is going on in the vicinity of the Zanzibaris’ quarters. About 
thirty Wa-Chaga are there busy chaffering their goods for cloth and 
blue beads. The men are all naked, excepting for a tiny cloak or 
mantle of dressed fur round their shoulders. The women are prin¬ 
cipally clothed with thick bands of beads, but they generally have a 
short leathern apron or petticoat. The wares of these people 
consist principally of Indian corn, in the ripe grain, and also green 
cobs ; two or three kinds of beans and peas ; flour made from millet 
seed; tobacco in the leaf;honey;bananas, ripe and unripe; calabashes 
of sour milk or rancid butter, and numbers of live fowls. Perhaps on 
such a day as this I have purchased as many as eighty fowls for one 
“hand” (about an ell) of cloth each (approximate value 2d. an ell). 
Or there may by chance be a goat or sheep for sale ; but this not 
often, as Mandara is supposed to own all the live-stock of the 
country as personal property, although he gives many goats, 
sheep, and cows to his subjects as presents, conditionally or. their 
