You may assume that there was nothing more in this than ordinary politeness, and that anybody would act similarly. I should like to be able to say so. You may think I make too much of common courtesies and small hospitalities. Travel across a country such as this and you will appreciate them, the more by contrast. I suppose a great deal depends on character and temperament, otherwise there is no understanding the difference which marks men.
Not long ago I was located in a mud hut which was clean and roomy and in which I was quite happy. The second night I was informed it was wanted for someone else—a junior member of the staff of the concern—and although there was plenty of accommodation for either him or me in other buildings on the ground, the quarter given me to sleep in was of a kind that, in preference, I went to the hovel where two of my native servants—the horse boys—were passing the night, and had the bed brought there.
Of course I could have had the place to myself, but the boys were there first and had made a fire to keep themselves warm during the cold hours. Had I turned them out, they could not then have secured further fuel, and to have gone into a cold hut from a warm one, with their single blanket apiece, would be dangerous to health.
You may not regard highly the Englishman who puts another into the position stated, though it be merely a passing traveller. I make no grievance of the incident, unpleasant as the situation undoubtedly was. When, therefore, a T. H. Driver appears in the path, with his considerate heart, too much can scarcely be said for him.
My own case is not the only one I have witnessed. When passing through Gurum on a previous occasion I saw a man being carried in an invalid’s hammock towards Rahama. His health had broken. He had been sent home and was too ill to ride a horse. The bearers stopped a little way from Mr Driver’s bungalow, and the sick man sat under the shadow of some trees as a temporary rest from the tiring hammock. I looked on as Mr Driver went over. He exchanged a few words with the man, who was a stranger, and then led him across.
The miner had been a burly, strong fellow. Now he was in a shattered state and could not stand alone. With arm round the poor fellow’s waist and as tender and gentle as if he had been a girl, Driver helped him along with slow steps to his own bedroom and bade him lie and rest there until the midday intensity of the tropical sun had abated. And when the invalid resumed his journey Driver had given him a proper utensil for boiling water and thus added to the stranger’s chance of retaining life whilst in the bush. “Good luck! Drop me a line to say how you are on reaching the Coast,” were Driver’s parting words. They constitute a tactful paraphrase of a request to know whether a man has lived to get to the sea.
I was away from Gurum in the early morning, and we easily arrived at Raffan Governor, 14 miles, about the time people in England would be finishing breakfast. There was thus a clear day for writing, and the carriers would have a good rest, away from the nocturnal attractions of a large village, for the long march on the morrow.
The carriers were aware that on the last day they had to do the longest—though, as regards the ground, not the hardest—march since they had been with me, and there was no trouble in parading them early and getting away.
Since I previously came over this ground the aspect has altered considerably. The rain-torn roads, making them into ditches and ridges, have been repaired and are now smooth enough to have wheeled along them frail bassinettes. The surface is as level as an ideal sand road. No one who had not seen would think that it will be washed away to a condition impassable for wheeled vehicles in a few weeks of the rainy season.