Niger

difficult subject. c He has the manners and
dignities of one of his Niger kings,5 wrote one
aggrieved lady, not unjustifiably, for his height com¬
bined with his mask chilled hero-worship. Under¬
neath that mask the boy of Fowlshiels struggled, torn
betwixt shyness and an uncertain triumph. He
had put his schoolboy dreams into action, which
few men do. Now he could have the tale of it
written and be finished with the thing forever.
But his was a slow and unskilled hand with a
pen : the learned journals and the unlearned idlers
of the London coffee-rooms, moving their attention
a moment from the atrocities of murder and mis-
government so upsetting for the genteel to gaze
upon across the Channel, clamoured for an account
of Mungo’s travels. Had he really discovered
golden Timbuctoo ? Had he married Queen
Fatima, the beautiful girl who ruled a lost king¬
dom ? Had he— ?
Bryan Edwards, a retired West Indian planter
with a facile pen, a passion for politics, and a great
belief in slavery, undertook to draw up from
Mungo’s notes an abstract of his travels. Mungo
helped and superintended, strolling up and down
the room as he spoke of Benowm. Rennel drew
the maps, and the work progressed, mere abstract
though it was, slowly and toilsomely as June drew
on. Mungo took to staring northwards at night,
taking his thoughts beyond these miles of road and
field to that Scotland which, like the good Scot of
his age, he was so shy in acknowledging.
254