"Halimah Is My Cook, But She Never Can Tell The Difference Between Tea And Coffee."

Ferajji, the cook, was ready as usual with excellent tea, and a dish of smoking cakes; "dampers," as the Doctor called them.

I never did care much for this kind of a cake fried in a pan, but they were necessary to the Doctor, who had nearly lost all his teeth from the hard fare of Lunda. He had been compelled to subsist on green ears of Indian corn; there was no meat in that district; and the effort to gnaw at the corn ears had loosened all his teeth. I preferred the corn scones of Virginia, which, to my mind, were the nearest approach to palatable bread obtainable in Central Africa.

The Doctor said he had thought me a most luxurious and rich man, when he saw my great bath-tub carried on the shoulders of one of my men; but he thought me still more luxurious this morning, when my knives and forks, and plates, and cups, saucers, silver spoons, and silver teapot were brought forth shining and bright, spread on a rich Persian carpet, and observed that I was well attended to by my yellow and ebon Mercuries.

This was the beginning of our life at Ujiji. I knew him not as a friend before my arrival. He was only an object to me - a great item for a daily newspaper, as much as other subjects in which the voracious news-loving public delight in. I had gone over battlefields, witnessed revolutions, civil wars, rebellions, emeutes and massacres; stood close to the condemned murderer to record his last struggles and last sighs; but never had I been called to record anything that moved me so much as this man's woes and sufferings, his privations and disappointments, which now were poured into my ear. Verily did I begin to perceive that "the Gods above do with just eyes survey the affairs of men." I began to recognize the hand of an overruling and kindly Providence.

The following are singular facts worthy for reflection. I was, commissioned for the duty of discovering Livingstone sometime in October, 1869. Mr. Bennett was ready with the money, and I was ready for the journey. But, observe, reader, that I did not proceed directly upon the search mission. I had many tasks to fulfil before proceeding with it, and many thousand miles to travel over. Supposing that I had gone direct to Zanzibar from Paris, seven or eight months afterwards, perhaps, I should have found myself at Ujiji, but Livingstone would not have been found there then; he was on the Lualaba; and I should have had to follow him on his devious tracks through the primeval forests of Manyuema, and up along the crooked course of the Lualaba for hundreds of miles. The time taken by me in travelling up the Nile, back to Jerusalem, then to Constantinople, Southern Russia, the Caucasus, and Persia, was employed by Livingstone in fruitful discoveries west of the Tanganika.

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