The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
they seemed like the craters of volcanoes. Riding to the top of an
isolated hillock Roger obtained confirmation of the guides' story. The
valley ended in a lake of respectable size.
The grassy flats between the converging rivulets swarmed with big game
which showed comparatively little fear of man and might be seen grazing
with herds of the natives' cattle. A succession of exclamations, half
wonderment, half fear, came from Lucy.
"Oh! ... I ... _say_! ... I thought those were great tree trunks till
they moved, but ... they're..."
"They're _giraffes_, by Jove! I wonder whether I ought to bring one
down? Better not ... might delay us ... and I don't know how the
natives 'ud take it...."
A herd of six or seven stately giraffes suspended their browsing on the
upper branches of an acacia tree, and gazed at them with their liquid
eyes, flicking their satiny bodies with tails that terminated in large
black tassels.
"O-oh!'" came from Lucy, as she reined in her donkey. "_Look_ at those
things over there! Like houses or great rocks, but they're moving too!"
She pointed with her riding whip to some grey bulks in the middle
distance which, as they swished through the herbage, showed here and
there a gleam of polished tusks.
"Shoot! Master, shoot!" exclaimed the Wanyamwezi.... "Elephants,
Master!" But Roger called for silence and held his hand. Supposing the
elephants charged down on Lucy? And then he did not know how the sounds
of guns would be received in this new country, what the unknown natives
might think, and lastly, perhaps there was beginning to dawn on him an
appreciation of what this spectacle meant: a piece of absolutely
unspoiled Africa, not yet ravaged by the white man or the native hunter,
armed with the white man's weapons. His caravan had plenty of dried
meat. They should not break the charm of the Happy Valley--the phrase
came suddenly into his mind, some dim remembrance of Dr. Samuel
Johnson's ponderous romance.
As they advanced northwards the scenes grew more idyllic. Herds of
gnus, hartebeests, elands, and zebras, intermingled with reed buck and
impala, alternately stared in immobility, then dashed off in clouds of
yellow dust, and once more stood at gaze. Gazelles with glossy black,
annulated horns and bodies brilliant in colour--golden-red,
black-banded, and snowy-white below--cropped the turf a few yards from
the faintly marked track which the caravan was following; and though the
bucks lifted their heads to observe this advancing file of human beings
they scarcely moved away more than a few yards.
The Valley was not entirely given up to wild life, though it seemed
likely that it was only used by man as a pasture ground, and that he
preferred the higher country, the hillocks on either side of the plain,
for his habitations, out of the way of floods and swamps. But large
herds of cattle browsed among antelopes and zebra and were watched over
by herdsmen who displayed singularly little curiosity over this first
invasion of the Happy Valley by the white man. The Stotts who had
preceded Roger and Lucy seemed to have satisfied their curiosity, once
and for all. These cattle-tenders were different in physical type to
the ordinary Bantu Negro. They were tall; gracefully, slenderly built;
and reminded Brentham of Somalis, though their head-hair was
close-cropped. Such women as were met showed no sign of fear. They
were clad in ample garments of dressed leather. But the men had all the
gallant nakedness of the Masai--a skin cape over the shoulders,
otherwise only ivory arm-rings and metal-chain necklaces.
The Masai guides occasionally plucked handfuls of grass and exhibited
them to the groups of herdsmen as a testimony to the peaceful intentions
of the white man's caravan. This voucher was further confirmed by the
returning band of Masai who had escorted the Stotts to this Arcadia and
were now returning to northern Nguru. They exchanged musical
salutations with Roger's guides and told them the "Sitoto" were camped
in a village one day's further journey to the north, near the shores of
the lake.
"That's all right," said Roger, his mind greatly relieved. "Then let's
give our _safari_ a half-holiday and take things easy. We'll pitch our
camp on that knoll. How delightful is this short green turf after the
miles and miles of burnt grass we've passed through. The spring has
begun here a month earlier than in the lower-lying country. I expect
the high mountains to the north have attracted the rains, though it's
only October. Have you noticed, also, since we entered this valley
we've had no mosquitoes? I wonder why? Something p'raps they don't
like in the water, or not enough long grass?..."
As soon as the camp was finished, the pastoral people brought them rich,
sweet milk for sale, in tightly-woven grass receptacles, in calabashes,
or clay pots. Sometimes this milk had a smoky taste from the rough
methods by which the milk pots were cleansed. But it was as sweet as a
nut and seemed to Lucy, who had long been deprived of milk, except doled
out in small quantities for tea, incomparably delicious as a
thirst-quencher. And these Egyptian-like people--so often showing a
Pharaonic profile and speaking a language which Roger afterwards
declared not very far removed from Gala--also traded in honey, honey
flavoured with the scent of the acacia blossoms, appearing now as golden
fluff on the awakening trees.
The next day, the seventh since they left Burungi, Brentham's caravan
came into full view of the lake, its shores lined with dense ranks of
pinkish-white flamingoes. To the south-east was a native village of
long, continuous "tembe" houses, arranged more or less in
parallelograms, or hollow squares, enclosing for each family or group a
turfy space where the cattle passed the night and family life was
carried on in the open air and in security.
One of these enclosures had evidently been given over to the Stotts for
a temporary home. And from out of it Mr. and Mrs. Stott might be
descried, hurrying to meet the caravan. Before they could arrive, Roger
halted his men and surveyed the whole scene before him from a grassy
mound where he thought to pitch his camp. Projecting mountain
buttresses shut in the valley and the lake, west, north and east. West
and north these mountains almost overhung the flat lake shores in an
abrupt escarpment, blue, without details, in the afternoon shadow. To
the east of the lake, though there were great heights and in the
north-east a hint of giant summits capped with snow, the rise was not so
abrupt, more broken, and the rocks more arid, but vivid and variegated
in colour---red, yellow, greenish grey, purple black and creamy white.
The mountains on the west were diversified with combes and glens, were
carved, moulded, seamed with watercourses; embroidered and mantled with
dark green forests. Where the lake was deep its waters were a pure
cobalt, but its shallows were whitish-green with salt or soda, and the
level shores from which the waters had retreated were greyish white,
probably with the guano of the countless flamingoes, who had their
nesting-stools some distance back from the water's edge. Herds of cattle
browsed peacefully on the green water-meadows of the river-delta; nearer
at hand flocks of black and white sheep mingled with half-shy gazelles
of golden brown. Great Secretary birds--grey, black, and white--stalked
through the herbage looking for snakes and lizards, knowing no fear of
man in their honourable calling. Blue whorls of smoke arose from the
fishermen's fires on the lake shore, where fish was being smoked on
wooden frames. All this was irradiated by the yellow light of the
westering sun. Before, the Stotts could reach them and break their
silence of contentment, Roger turned to Lucy and said: "This _is_ the
Happy Valley!"
The Stotts were of course full of questions and wonderment. Mr. Stott
was a middle-aged man of strong build, honest hazel eyes, clipped beard,
tanned face and generally pleasing appearance. He had never before met
either Lucy or Brentham, so Mrs. Stott had to make the introductions.
After these surprised and joyous greetings, an adjournment took place to
the Stotts' quarters. Although they had only been about a week
established here, in a portion of the village of Mwada lent them by the
native chief, the practical and never defeated Stotts---the born
colonists, the realized Swiss Family Robinson--had already made
themselves a new home in the wilderness. They had swept out and cleaned
the "tembes," the continuous huts of wattle and daub, divided into many
compartments, which enclosed the turfy square; and in the centre of
their "compound" had erected a circular building of stout palm poles and
grass that covered a swept space of ground. In the middle of this they
had fashioned a table of reed-bundles fastened to upright posts and had
manufactured rough forms and stools of hyphaene palm trunks. This was
their "baraza" or reception-room, their eating-house, and shaded
playground for their hardy children. Within the enclosed ground they
kept their milch goats, sheep, and riding donkeys. Of these they had
quite a troop, purchased from the Masai. These asses had proved most
useful as beasts of burden for the transport of their loads, so that
they almost managed without human porterage. Mr. Stott had constructed
very practical pack saddles.
"Come along to our baraza," said genial Mrs. Stott. "Let us try and make
you up some kind of a meal before we begin talking."
Roger gave a few directions about his own camping, a quarter of a mile
distant, and then joined Lucy and the Stotts, who were walking to "our
new mission station," as Mrs. Stott called it.
"You know we are _never_ down-hearted; we _know_ God orders everything
for the best! I am sure He thought we were settling down too
comfortably among the Wagogo, and so gave us a hint to press farther
into the interior. _Of course_, when things quiet down: for either the
Germans or the English _must_ conquer East Africa: it would be sickening
to leave the Arabs and Ruga-ruga in control--we shall build up again our
Burungi station and put capable people in charge of it, people who'll
get on well with the Wagogo.... They want a bit of managing. You see
how well it would suit as a halt on the way to this wonderful
country--What do you call it? 'The Happy Valley'? Yes, _that_ shall be
its name. _How_ the Lord's ways are _past_ finding out! I felt _so_
sick at heart when we were leaving Burungi.... I'll tell you how it all
happened. Our Masai friends had beaten off the Ruga-ruga, but the Wagogo
thought they intended to return, probably with real Arabs in command.
My husband is obliged to shoot game; otherwise we couldn't live, much
less feed our people. They raided us chiefly for arms and
ammunition.... We beat them off, but the Wagogo thought they would be
sure to return--much stronger next time. So after thinking it over and
putting our case before God in prayer we decided that night after the
attack ceased, to spend the hours of darkness packing. The next morning
we bought ten more donkeys from the Masai, besides the ten we had
already, loaded them up and then said to our Masai friends--my husband
speaks Masai pretty well: 'Now, can you guide us to some country where
we can be safe from the Lajomba--their name for the Arabs--for a time?'
And they led us here ... let us say, rather, they were God's agents in
leading us here. Isn't this a _wonderful_ country? We have never seen
the like. Somehow we feel so _safe_ here. You can't think of any enemy
coming over those high mountains--one of them has snow on the summit--or
over the cliffs. They can only come up the river valley. And to do that