ent man; he speaks truly; he only looks at it in another light
from Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer.

He says of the river Shire, "It drains a low and exceedingly fertile
valley of from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth. Ranges of wooded
hills bound this valley on both sides. After the first twenty miles you
come to Mount Morambala, which rises with steep sides to 4000 feet in
height. It is wooded to the top, and very beautiful. A small village
peeps out about half-way up the mountain. It has a pure, bracing
atmosphere, and is perched above mosquito range. The people on the
summit have a very different climate and vegetation from those on the
plains, and they live amidst luxuriant vegetation. There are many
species of ferns, some so large as to deserve the name of trees. There
are also lemon and orange trees growing wild, and birds and animals of
all kinds." Thus far we agree with our opponent but listen to him as he
goes on:--

"The view from Morambala is extensive, but cheerless past description.
Swamp, swamp-reeking, festering, rotting, malaria-pregnant swamp, where
poisonous vapours for several months in the year are ever bulging up and
out into the air,--lies before you as far as the eye can reach, and
farther. If you enter the river at the worst seasons of the year, the
chances are you will take the worst type of fever. If, on the other
hand, you enter it during the best season, when the swamps are fairly
dried up, you have everything in your favour."

Now, our opponent gives a true statement of facts undoubtedly, but his
view of them is not cheering.

Contrast them with the view of Disco Lillihammer. That sagacious seaman
had entered the Shire neither in the "best" nor the "worst" of the
season. He had chanced upon it somewhere between the two.

"Git up your steam an' go 'longside," he said to Jumbo one afternoon, as
the two canoes were proceeding quietly among magnificent giant-reeds,
sedges, and bulrushes, which towered high above them--in some places
overhung them.

"I say, Mister Harold, ain't it splendid?"

"Magnificent!" replied Harold with a look of quiet enthusiasm.

"I _does_ enjoy a swamp," continued the seaman, allowing a thin cloud to
trickle from his lips.

"So do I, Disco."

"There's such a many outs and ins an' roundabouts in it. And such
powerful reflections o' them reeds in the quiet water. W'y, sir, I do
declare w'en I looks through 'em in a dreamy sort of way f