84 
THE KILIMA-NJAR 0 EXPEDITION. 
sented here : but my artistic labours were gladly laid 
aside at the announcement that lunch was ready, and 
I sat down with keen satisfaction to my tempting 
table, which had been further brightened by a little 
bouquet of wild flowers gathered and arranged by 
Virapan. Would you like to know what I ate? If 
so, I will endeavour to describe this one meal, so 
that you may better realize how I ordinarily fared 
in Africa while on the road. There was a plate of 
fowl soup to begin with, nicely flavoured with onions, 
thickened with a little maize-flour and rice. Two 
thin slices of toast lay beside it, made from some 
loaves my cook baked while we rested at Taveita. 
After the soup was finished came a little good curry 
made from the soup meat, and flavoured with cocoa- 
nut milk (for we had carried a sack of cocoa-nuts 
from the coast). Then, when the curry is eaten, a 
fresh plate was brought me, and a dear old battered 
calabash about half-full of delicious honey, which 
tastes like the smell of mimosa blossoms; and after 
eating some of this spread on a slice of Taveitan bread 
(which deserves its recipe in brackets: two pounds of 
maize-flour, half a cup of palm wine, a quarter of an 
ostrich egg, a pinch of salt, and a spoonful of butter), 
I wound up my lunch with a cup of fragrant tea, and 
sat over an old book, while my men packed up the 
impedimenta once more, and started again on the road 
towards Mosi. 
The afternoon was sultry, and we felt so meritorious 
in having accomplished our ten miles before lunch, 
that there was a general disposition to take things 
easily; besides which, our path led us through much 
more pleasing country than in the morning. We 
crossed a biggish stream (which rises near the summit 
