Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

THE DESERT JOURNEY 155
smile across a remark about the child's-play hoeing under
such simple conditions. Saved and knows it, what does
he now answer—this same man in this same field to this
same passer-by ?
*' Truly soft," says he, " is the soil, for
the God Who softened my heart also softened the hard soil
He has rained on my hard soul as well as on my soil."
Do not blame that simple soul because he did not see
the coincidence, for he did not. No calendar has he, no
notion that here—or nowhere—is divine drama. Ten
solid years ago, the same field, same man, same passer-
by :
a hard heart and hard soil then ; a soft, saved
heart and soft, saved soil now. The old graceless growl is
gone, and now for the note of joy—a full octave, a grand
diapason. Having both a canoe and a farm, this saved
soul is as much sailor as landsman, and can literally fulfil
Clement's word in the second century : " Praising we
plough ;
and singing we sail."
(20th October.)
A formidable feature of our inland journey is the
crossing of the weary Kifumadzi desert in the Luvale
country. A curious bit of the earth's crust this to crawl
over. In old maps here is a flat seriously put down as a
sea, and (certes !) looking out from camp just as day is
breaking in red on the great expanse of waste lying at
our feet, the outlook is reminiscent of a sullen sea. We,
as it were, camped on the beach near by, while stretching
far beyond lies the great sandy ocean shorn by the wind
of anything that ever grew upon it. Tufts of sere grass
the exception. You might carry the idea a little further,