Explore "Tropical Africa" by Henry Drummond on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A TRAVELLER'S DIARY.
With a glade in the forest for a study, a bale of calico for a table, and the sun vertical and something under a billion centigrade, diary-writing in the tropics is more picturesque than inspiring. To keep a journal, however, next to keeping his scalp, is the one thing for which the consistent traveller will go through fire and water; and the dusky native who carries the faded note-books on the march is taught to regard the sacredness of his office more than if he drove the car of Juggernaut. The contents of these mysterious note-books, nevertheless, however precious to those who write them, are, like the photographs of one's relations, of pallid interest to others, and I have therefore conscientiously denied myself the joy of exhibiting such offspring of the wilderness as I possess to my confiding reader.