Excerpt from The Hill of Goodbye: The Story of a Solitary White Woman's Life in Central Africa There was a great scarcity of water in this place. We ladies had to content ourselves with a little in a basin which we used alternately. It was muddy, being gathered from a hole dug in the sand. How hot it was But for the air from the sea we could hardly have existed. Yet we were told that up the river it was much hotter, the tempera ture being 120 in the shade. By day we waded through the sand, sinking up to the ankle at every step. At night we sat in the eating room. The door stood wide open. Bats flew above us under the raftered roof while we wrote letters and listened to the lap, lap of waves from the shore. A week after our arrival word came that the steamer the james Stevenson was stuck on a sand bank a short distance up the river. A number of men started in a boat to help to push her off. Every body treated it as a good joke. We ladies were much excited thinking that our escorts might be aboard. But it was not till next day that she arrived, when we learned that no one had come to meet us as yet. Three days after we rose at four in the morning to start on our river journey. It was quite dark but the air was dry for a wonder, as often a-heavy dew falls through the night. The dawn came as soon as we had crossed the gangway. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.