As soon as the camp was finished, the pastoral people brought them rich, sweet milk for sale, in tightly-woven grass receptacles, in calabashes, or clay pots. Sometimes this milk had a smoky taste from the rough methods by which the milk pots were cleansed. But it was as sweet as a nut and seemed to Lucy, who had long been deprived of milk, except doled out in small quantities for tea, incomparably delicious as a thirst-quencher. And these Egyptian-like people—so often showing a Pharaonic profile and speaking a language which Roger afterwards declared not very far removed from Gala—also traded in honey, honey flavoured with the scent of the acacia blossoms, appearing now as golden fluff on the awakening trees.
The next day, the seventh since they left Burungi, Brentham's caravan came into full view of the lake, its shores lined with dense ranks of pinkish-white flamingoes. To the south-east was a native village of long, continuous "tembe" houses, arranged more or less in parallelograms, or hollow squares, enclosing for each family or group a turfy space where the cattle passed the night and family life was carried on in the open air and in security.
One of these enclosures had evidently been given over to the Stotts for a temporary home. And from out of it Mr. and Mrs. Stott might be descried, hurrying to meet the caravan. Before they could arrive, Roger halted his men and surveyed the whole scene before him from a grassy mound where he thought to pitch his camp. Projecting mountain buttresses shut in the valley and the lake, west, north and east. West and north these mountains almost overhung the flat lake shores in an abrupt escarpment, blue, without details, in the afternoon shadow. To the east of the lake, though there were great heights and in the north-east a hint of giant summits capped with snow, the rise was not so abrupt, more broken, and the rocks more arid, but vivid and variegated in colour—-red, yellow, greenish grey, purple black and creamy white. The mountains on the west were diversified with combes and glens, were carved, moulded, seamed with watercourses; embroidered and mantled with dark green forests. Where the lake was deep its waters were a pure cobalt, but its shallows were whitish-green with salt or soda, and the level shores from which the waters had retreated were greyish white, probably with the guano of the countless flamingoes, who had their nesting-stools some distance back from the water's edge. Herds of cattle browsed peacefully on the green water-meadows of the river-delta; nearer at hand flocks of black and white sheep mingled with half-shy gazelles of golden brown. Great Secretary birds—grey, black, and white—stalked through the herbage looking for snakes and lizards, knowing no fear of man in their honourable calling. Blue whorls of smoke arose from the fishermen's fires on the lake shore, where fish was being smoked on wooden frames. All this was irradiated by the yellow light of the westering sun. Before, the Stotts could reach them and break their silence of contentment, Roger turned to Lucy and said: "This is the Happy Valley!"
The Stotts were of course full of questions and wonderment. Mr. Stott was a middle-aged man of strong build, honest hazel eyes, clipped beard, tanned face and generally pleasing appearance. He had never before met either Lucy or Brentham, so Mrs. Stott had to make the introductions.
After these surprised and joyous greetings, an adjournment took place to the Stotts' quarters. Although they had only been about a week established here, in a portion of the village of Mwada lent them by the native chief, the practical and never defeated Stotts—-the born colonists, the realized Swiss Family Robinson—had already made themselves a new home in the wilderness. They had swept out and cleaned the "tembes," the continuous huts of wattle and daub, divided into many compartments, which enclosed the turfy square; and in the centre of their "compound" had erected a circular building of stout palm poles and grass that covered a swept space of ground. In the middle of this they had fashioned a table of reed-bundles fastened to upright posts and had manufactured rough forms and stools of hyphaene palm trunks. This was their "baraza" or reception-room, their eating-house, and shaded playground for their hardy children. Within the enclosed ground they kept their milch goats, sheep, and riding donkeys. Of these they had quite a troop, purchased from the Masai. These asses had proved most useful as beasts of burden for the transport of their loads, so that they almost managed without human porterage. Mr. Stott had constructed very practical pack saddles.
"Come along to our baraza," said genial Mrs. Stott. "Let us try and make you up some kind of a meal before we begin talking."
Roger gave a few directions about his own camping, a quarter of a mile distant, and then joined Lucy and the Stotts, who were walking to "our new mission station," as Mrs. Stott called it.
"You know we are never down-hearted; we know God orders everything for the best! I am sure He thought we were settling down too comfortably among the Wagogo, and so gave us a hint to press farther into the interior. Of course, when things quiet down: for either the Germans or the English must conquer East Africa: it would be sickening to leave the Arabs and Ruga-ruga in control—we shall build up again our Burungi station and put capable people in charge of it, people who'll get on well with the Wagogo.... They want a bit of managing. You see how well it would suit as a halt on the way to this wonderful country—What do you call it? 'The Happy Valley'? Yes, that shall be its name. How the Lord's ways are past finding out! I felt so sick at heart when we were leaving Burungi.... I'll tell you how it all happened. Our Masai friends had beaten off the Ruga-ruga, but the Wagogo thought they intended to return, probably with real Arabs in command. My husband is obliged to shoot game; otherwise we couldn't live, much less feed our people. They raided us chiefly for arms and ammunition.... We beat them off, but the Wagogo thought they would be sure to return—much stronger next time. So after thinking it over and putting our case before God in prayer we decided that night after the attack ceased, to spend the hours of darkness packing. The next morning we bought ten more donkeys from the Masai, besides the ten we had already, loaded them up and then said to our Masai friends—my husband speaks Masai pretty well: 'Now, can you guide us to some country where we can be safe from the Lajomba—their name for the Arabs—for a time?' And they led us here ... let us say, rather, they were God's agents in leading us here. Isn't this a wonderful country? We have never seen the like. Somehow we feel so safe here. You can't think of any enemy coming over those high mountains—one of them has snow on the summit—or over the cliffs. They can only come up the river valley. And to do that they must fight their way through the Rangi and Fiome peoples. The Rangi people speak a language like Chi-gogo, and so—oddly enough—do the fisher folk round this extraordinary lake. But the others don't look like ordinary Negroes. They are more like Somalis. And I can't make anything out of their language. But although they're different to the Masai they seem to have some kind of alliance with them, and they received us here as friends, because the Masai brought us. What a field for the Lord's work! And to think I almost doubted God when He let the Ruga-ruga attack Burungi!...
"But here we are, at our temporary home, and I must go to the cook-house and see about your meal. You won't mind native stuff, will you? You see we've lost most of our tinned provisions, and indeed we had been living on the country long before the Ruga-ruga attacked us. Like all the other missionaries of late we've had very few caravans from the coast."
Mr. Stott led the way to the "baraza" with its rough table of reed-bundles on a framework of sticks and its palm trunks to sit on.