anything; and she had been considerably exercised in her mind about this fact.  She was afraid the Doctor did not properly appreciate her culinary abilities; but now she was amazed at the extraordinary quantity of food eaten, and she was in a state of delightful excitement.  We could hear her tongue rolling off a tremendous volume of clatter to the wondering crowds who halted before the kitchen to hear the current of news with which she edified them.  Poor, faithful soul!  While we listened to the noise of her furious gossip, the Doctor related her faithful services, and the terrible anxiety she evinced when the guns first announced the arrival of another white man in Ujiji; how she had been flying about in a state cf the utmost excitement, from the kitchen into his presence, and out again into the square, asking all sorts of questions; how she was in despair at the scantiness of the general larder and treasury of the strange household; how she was anxious to make up for their poverty by a grand appearance—­ to make up a sort of Barmecide feast to welcome the white man.  “Why,” said she, “is he not one of us?  Does he not bring plenty of cloth and beads?  Talk about the Arabs!  Who are they that they should be compared to white men?  Arabs, indeed!”

The Doctor and I conversed upon many things, especially upon his own immediate troubles, and his disappointments, upon his arrival in Ujiji, when told that all his goods had been sold, and he was reduced to poverty.  He had but twenty cloths or so left of the stock he had deposited with the man called Sherif, the half-caste drunken tailor, who was sent by the Consul in charge of the goods.  Besides which he had been suffering from an attack of dysentery, and his condition was most deplorable.  He was but little improved on this day, though he had eaten well, and already began to feel stronger and better.

This day, like all others, though big with happiness to me, at last was fading away.  While sitting with our faces looking to the east, as Livingstone had been sitting for days preceding my arrival, we noted the dark shadows which crept up above the grove of palms beyond the village, and above the rampart of mountains which we had crossed that day, now looming through the fast approaching darkness; and we listened, with our hearts full of gratitude to the Great Giver of Good and Dispenser of all Happiness, to the sonorous thunder of the surf of the Tanganika, and to the chorus which the night insects sang.  Hours passed, and we were still sitting there with our minds busy upon the day’s remarkable events, when I remembered that the traveller had not yet read his letters.

 “Doctor,” I said, “you had better read your letters.  I will not
 keep you up any longer.”

 “Yes,” he answered, “it is getting late; and I will go and read
 my friends’ letters.  Good-night, and God bless you.”

 “Good-night, my dear Doctor; and let me hope that your news will
 be such as you desire.”