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

-NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 311
** All things work together for good " (Rom. viii. 28).
This benighted famine experience is called by the
Arabs " seeing the stars in the day-time." Even before
Captain Stairs' arrival from the East with his large caravan,
the country had been steadily sinking under the indirect
pressure the Va Sanga were bringing to bear upon Bunkeya.
So much so, that when the new-comers arrived, the tide
had gone far, far out in the hemmed-in capital. Food
could not be had for the buying, and the natives every-
where, hollow as a drum, were eking out an existence on
roots, while they watched their corn ripening with loaded
guns. Every thief was shot at sight, and even soldiers
were bulleted. Thus matters stood, I say, even before
Stairs came with his Arabs, and now begins a struggle for
existence such as never before happened in these parts.
His soldiers turn out to be (what alas, Koran chanters
often are) an unscrupulous lot, and loot cruel and whole-
sale seems to be the order of the day. The strong come
oflF better than the weak, but the victors fare badly
enough ;
eighty of their number have died in the capital,
plus seventy dead or missing. As for the poor natives,
they are wiped out in hundreds, specially all the old folks,
who, hollow eyes unnaturally large and bright with the
weird lustre of famine fever, are forced to the wall. Thus
Africa reads us the old lesson that having no imports, it
can only as a vast continent live one year at a time. The
least tampering with the agricultural year means blighting
famine :
explorers, beware !
And how do we live? Here is a subject the very