Part 3 (1/2)

'Well, you have soarden!' I said, overpowered with admiration not untouched by envy

'Yes,' answered the arden, and has well repaid my labour; but it is the climate that I have to thank If you stick a peach-stone into the ground it will bear fruit the fourth year, and a rose-cutting will bloom in a year It is a lovely clime'

Just then we came to a ditch about ten feet wide, and full of water, on the other side of which was a loopholed stone wall eight feet high, and with sharp flints plentifully set in

'There,' said Mr Mackenzie, pointing to the ditch and wall, 'this is num opus; at least, this and the church, which is the other side of the house It tookthe ditch and build the wall, but I never felt safe till it was done; and now I can defy all the savages in Africa, for the spring that fills the ditch is inside the wall, and bubbles out at the top of the hill winter and summer alike, and I always keep a store of fourover a plank and through a very narrow opening in the wall, we entered into what Mrs Mackenzie called _her_ doarden, the beauty of which is really beyond ardenias, or caland); and there was also a patch given up to a collection of bulbous roots hter, froly beautiful In the arden, and exactly opposite the veranda, a beautiful fountain of clear water bubbled up froround, and fell into a stone-work basin which had been carefully built to receive it, whence the overflow found its way by means of a drain to theas a reservoir, whence an unfailing supply of water was available to irrigate all the gardens below The house itself, a , was roofed with slabs of stone, and had a handsome veranda in front It was built on three sides of a square, the fourth side being taken up by the kitchens, which stood separate froood plan in a hot country In the centre of this square thus formed was, perhaps, theplace, and that was a single tree of the conifer tribe, varieties of which grow freely on the highlands of this part of Africa This splendid tree, which Mr Mackenzie informed us was a landmark for fifty miles round, and which we had ourselves seen for the last forty miles of our journey, ht, the trunk round For so brown pillar without a single branch, but at that height splendid dark green boughs, which, looked at fro out horizontally froarden, to both of which they furnished a grateful proportion of shade, without--being so high up--offering any iht and air

'What a beautiful tree!' exclaiht; it is a beautiful tree There is not another like it in all the country round, that I know of,' answered Mr Mackenzie 'I call it my watch tower As you see, I have a rope ladder fixed to the lowest bough; and if I want to see anything that is going on within fifteen lass

But you ry, and I am sure the dinner is cooked Coh for these savage parts; and I can tell you what, we have got--a French cook' And he led the way on to the veranda

As I was following hi what on earth he could h the door that opened on to the veranda from the house, a dapper little man, dressed in a neat blue cotton suit, with shoesair and most enor to a point for all the world like a pair of buffalo-horns

'Madame bids me for to say that dinnar is sarved Messieurs, aas, as loitering along after us and playing with his battleaxe, he threw up his hands in astonishment 'Ah, mais quel hoe affreux! Take but note of his huge choppare and the great pit in his head'

'Ay,' said Mr Mackenzie; 'what are you talking about, Alphonse?'

'Talking about!' replied the little Frencheneral appearance seemed to fascinate him; 'why I talk of him'--and he rudely pointed--'of ce h, and U that he was the object of remark, frowned ferociously, for he had alike a personal liberty

'Parbleu!' said Alphonse, 'he is angered--he rimace I like not his air I vanish' And he did with considerable rapidity

Mr Mackenzie joined heartily in the shout of laughter which we indulged in 'He is a queer character--Alphonse,' he said 'By and by I will tell you his history; in the ht I ask,' said Sir Henry, after we had eaten a most excellent dinner, 'how you came to have a French cook in these wilds?'

'Oh,' answered Mrs Mackenzie, 'he arrived here of his own accord about a year ago, and asked to be taken into our service He had got into some trouble in France, and fled to Zanzibar, where he found an application had been made by the French Government for his extradition Whereupon he rushed off up-country, and fell in, when nearly starved, with our caravan of oods, and was brought on here You should get him to tell you the story'

When dinner was over we lit our pipes, and Sir Henry proceeded to give our host a description of our journey up here, over which he looked very grave

'It is evident toyou, and I am very thankful that you have reached this house in safety I do not think that they will dare to attack you here It is unfortunate, though, that nearly all oods There are two hundred of them in the caravan, and the consequence is that I have not more than twenty men available for defensive purposes in case they should attack us But, still, I will just give a few orders;' and, calling a black arden, he went to the , and addressed him in a Swahili dialect The man listened, and then saluted and departed

'I a no such calamity upon you,' said I, anxiously, when he had taken his seat again 'Rather than bring those bloodthirsty villains about your ears, illof the sort If the Masai coive the I would not show any man the door for all the Masai in the world'

'That reminds me,' I said, 'the Consul at Lamu told me that he had had a letter from you, in which you said that a man had arrived here who reported that he had come across a white people in the interior Do you think that there was any truth in his story? I ask, because I have once or twice in my life heard rumours from natives who have come down from the far north of the existence of such a race'

Mr Mackenzie, by way of ansent out of the roo with hi, and all the blade, which was very thick and heavy, was to within a quarter of an inch of the cutting edge worked into an ornamental pattern exactly as ork soft ith a fret-saw, the steel, however, being invariably pierced in such a way as not to interfere with the strength of the sword This in itself was sufficiently curious, but as still es of the hollow spaces cut through the substance of the blade were old, which was in some way that I cannot understand welded on to the steel {Endnote 5}

'There,' said Mr Mackenzie, 'did you ever see a sword like that?'

We all exaot it to show you, because this is what the ht with hiive an air of truth to what I should otherwise have set down as a lie Look here; I will tell you all that I know about the matter, which is noton the veranda, when a poor,up and squatted down before me I asked hied into a long raed to a tribe far in the north, and how his tribe was destroyed by another tribe, and he with a few other survivors driven still further north past a lake naa Thence, it appears, he made his way to another lake that lay up in the mountains, ”a lake without a bottom”

he called it, and here his wife and brother died of an infectious sickness--probably ses into the wilderness, where he wandered ot into dense thorn forest, and was one day found there by so, and who took him to a place where all the people hite and lived in stone houses