FROM BUSSA TO THE SEA 489 A missionary was waiting for us when we landed, and I went at once to his house. The situation is beautiful enough, but what a hard life the Fathers lead ! They are, I believe, rather harassed by the Company, as much because they are French as because they are Catholic, and as a result their tale of converts is not very long. Some Sisters of Charity work in connection with them, and make their way on foot from village to village in the interior, marching at night to avoid the heat of the sun, and visiting the Christian natives far away from the river.

A few hours' walk off, the Fathers told us, are some big, very big, villages, into which alone they are able to penetrate, not without considerable danger to life sometimes. Terrible scenes of human sacrifice and cannibalism have been witnessed by the devoted Sisters. Such atrocities would never be tolerated in the French Sudan.

But what does all that matter to the Company as long as it can buy its palm-oil at the market-price, a price fixed by force ?

That evening we had to dine with us the only Father of the mission just then at Assaba, and two Sisters, one the Superior, Sister Damien, a pale-faced Italian, whose hands had become almost transparent, and whose features were wasted through successive attacks of fever. For all that she still eagerly pursued her vocation. I know nothing finer than the life led by these women at the extreme advance guard of civilization, exposed to the heat of the sun, to fever, to all manner of fatigue, to the indifference of the negroes, and sometimes, as if all that were not enough, to the malice of the whites.

I imagine that it was long since the Father and the Sisters had enjoyed themselves so much. Unfortunately a tornado burst upon us in the middle of dinner, and at eight o'clock we had to take refuge in Father Hacquart's rooms,