Foremost Among Those Who Welcomed Us Was A Father Of The Society Of St.-Esprit, Who With Other Jesuits, Under Father Superior Horner, Have Established A Missionary Post Of Considerable Influence And Merit At Bagamoyo.

We were invited to partake of the hospitality of the Mission, to take our meals there, and, should we desire it, to pitch our camp on their grounds.

But however strong the geniality of the welcome and sincere the heartiness of the invitation, I am one of those who prefer independence to dependence if it is possible. Besides, my sense of the obligation between host and guest had just had a fine edge put upon it by the delicate forbearance of my kind host at Zanzibar, who had betrayed no sign of impatience at the trouble I was only too conscious of having caused him. I therefore informed the hospitable Padre, that only for one night could I suffer myself to be enticed from my camp.

I selected a house near the western outskirts of the town, where there is a large open square through which the road from Unyanyembe enters. Had I been at Bagamoyo a month, I could not have bettered my location. My tents were pitched fronting the tembe (house) I had chosen, enclosing a small square, where business could be transacted, bales looked over, examined, and marked, free from the intrusion of curious sightseers. After driving the twenty-seven animals of the Expedition into the enclosure in the rear of the house, storing the bales of goods, and placing a cordon of soldiers round, I proceeded to the Jesuit Mission, to a late dinner, being tired and ravenous, leaving the newly-formed camp in charge of the white men and Capt. Bombay.

The Mission is distant from the town a good half mile, to the north of it; it is quite a village of itself, numbering some fifteen or sixteen houses. There are more than ten padres engaged in the establishment, and as many sisters, and all find plenty of occupation in educing from native crania the fire of intelligence. Truth compels me to state that they are very successful, having over two hundred pupils, boys and girls, in the Mission, and, from the oldest to the youngest, they show the impress of the useful education they have received.

The dinner furnished to the padres and their guest consisted of as many plats as a first-class hotel in Paris usually supplies, and cooked with nearly as much skill, though the surroundings were by no means equal. I feel assured also that the padres, besides being tasteful in their potages and entrees, do not stultify their ideas for lack of that element which Horace, Hafiz, and Byron have praised so much. The champagne - think of champagne Cliquot in East Africa! - Lafitte, La Rose, Burgundy, and Bordeaux were of first-rate quality, and the meek and lowly eyes of the fathers were not a little brightened under the vinous influence. Ah! those fathers understand life, and appreciate its duration.

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