"LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR" 263 At Kwoin village, far up the river, I was overtaken by the Inspector, whose energy and enterprise was enormous and enviable. The pioneer work of the officials of these countries is done in the darkness of obscurity, and seldom becomes known to the world. Reports written from experience and knowledge are locked up or pigeon-holed at official headquarters, and it is too often left to the casual visitor, incompetent because time and opportunities are restricted, to chronicle imperfect records to the best of his ability.

An excuse to visit the village was affiDrded by the flight of duck in its direction, and it gave me an example in a small way of the difficulties of travel which the courageous pioneers, who undertake most enterprising journeys in their necessary exploratory work, undergo. Far in the evening haze the cattle could be seen streaming from their feeding-grounds on the bank of cracked clay, representing terra firma in this land still inchoate, and only half emerged from the protracted initial processes of creation. Fully a mile of morass intervened, and a couple of sturdy, amiable artillerymen were of welcome assistance in the first instance in negotiating the deeper patches of mud and water through which the track led. The lady who pushed a canoe through the winding, narrow waterway, and dragged it over the shallows, gave a profitable example of the more thorough method of progressing ; repugnance at the black water was overcome, and the plunge taken. The bank