I find that Uledi has captured a Queen of the Pigmies, who is the wife of the Chief of Indékaru. She was brought in to be seen by me with three rings of polished iron around her neck, the ends of which were coiled like a watch spring. Three iron rings were suspended to each ear. She is of a light brown complexion, with broad round face, large eyes, and small but full lips. She had a quiet modest demeanour, though her dress was but a narrow fork clout of bark cloth. Her height is about four feet four inches, and her age may be nineteen or twenty. I notice when her arms are held against the light, a whity-brown fell on them. Her skin has not that silky smoothness of touch common to the Zanzibaris, but altogether she is a very pleasing little creature. [Illustration: THE QUEEN OF THE DWARFS.] _March 13th to April 1st_.--By the 25th I was well enough to be able to move about a few hundred yards at a time. My arm was still stiff and I was exceedingly feeble. Nelson has recovered somewhat from his successive fits of illness. During my convalescence I have been supported each afternoon to the centre of a lofty colonnade of trees, through which our road to the Nyanza leads, where in an easy chair I have passed hours of reading and drowsing. It has been a daily delight while helped to my leafy arcade to observe the rapid change in the growth of the corn in the fields, and to see how we have been encroaching upon the forest. Our cultivable area, after being cleaned, hoed, and planted, was not long left with its bare brown face naked. On a certain day it became green with the young corn blades, it had sprouted by thousands as though at the word of command. Only yesterday, as it were, we smiled to see the tender white stalk arched for a spring under a slowly rising clod, a now the clods have been brushed aside, the arched stalks have sprung upright, and the virgin plants have unfolded their tender green crests. Day by day it has been a wonder how the corn has thriven and grown, with what vigour the stalks have thickened, enlarged in leaf, and deepened in green. Side by side in due rank and order they have risen, the blades have extended towards one another in loving embrace, until the whole has become a solid square field of corn, the murmur of which is like the distant wash of a languid sea over a pebbly beach.