Niger

May I rather see the green sod on your grave than see you
anything but a Christian.’
It is almost the most appalling example in letters
of the humorless piety of adolescence. But Anderson,
that genial soul, seems to have remained uninfuri¬
ated. Perhaps he realised that the letter was Mungo’s
reaction to the sudden realisation of the straying de¬
lights and tenebrous terrors of the world faced alone.
So he was lifting his voice in protest, protesting and
protesting, his heart singing within him as he traced
the route to far Bencoolen. He was not merely an
insufferable young prig : he was a boy trying hard
to be grown up in the only fashion he knew how.
Dr. Anderson rode to Fowlshiels and showed the
letters to the Parks. They were greatly impressed.
Mungo sailed. He sails out of his own biography
for the space of nearly a year. The ship wandered
round Africa in the easy-going sailing of those days,
dawdled across the glassy North Pacific, put in at
Bencoolen, and drowsed there, gathering its cargo.
We catch a glimpse of Mungo, botanising on land—
it is possible that he botanised a considerable dis¬
tance up into the interior and stared at the Sumatran
mountains and wondered what was beyond. And
he dredged the shore waters and studied the fish,
and drew up a paper for the Transactions of the
Linnaean Society describing eight new and hitherto
unchristened fishes. He was happy, though the
mountains vexed his horizon. He had no vision of
that destiny that was being prepared for him with
the death of Houghton in Moorish Ludamar.
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