96 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

I have endeavored to picture our mode of life as faithfully and minutely as possible, because it bears no resemblance to travel in any other part of the world. Into the neart of a barbarous continent and a barbarous land, we carry with us every desirable comfort and luxury. In no part of Europe or America could we be so thoroughly independent, without undergoing considerable privations, and wholly losing that sense of rest which is the greatest enjoyment of this journey. We are cut off from all communication with the great world of politics, merchandise and usury, and remember it only through the heart, not through the brain. We go ashore in the delicious mornings, breathe the elastic air, and wander through the palm-groves, as happy and care-free as two Adams in a Paradise without Eves. It is an episode which will flow forward in the under-currents of our natures through the rest of our lives, soothing and refreshing us whenever it rises to the surface. I do not reproach myself for this passive and sensuous existence. I give myself up to it unreservedly, and if some angular-souled utilitarian should come along and recom mend me to shake off my laziness, and learn the conjugations of Coptic verbs or the hieroglyphs of Kneph and Thoth, I should not take the pipe from my mouth to answer him. My friend sometimes laughingly addresses me with two lines of Hebel s quaint Allemanic poetry : " Ei Bolch a Leben, junges Bluat, Desh ish wohl fiir a Thierle guat."

(such a life, young blood, best befits an animal), but I tell him that the wisdom of the Black Forest won't answer for the Nile, If any one persists in forcing the application, I prefer