After an absence of nearly four months we were again on the Lake shore. There were letters awaiting us from him. He had heard a rumour by accident of our arrival, and had steamed down to the south-west end of the Lake to verify it. It was only nine hours distant from his southernmost station, and this had been his first visit. The effect was excellent, but it was a great pity that he had not conformed to the request sent by couriers at so much expense from Zanzibar. For the mere number of lives saved it would have been better; we will say nothing of the fatigue and suffering endured by us during the four months, for we were vowed to that, and to the uttermost that he would demand and our mission would exact. Still we said nothing. We were twenty-six days together after the meeting. During this period we discovered that on some few points we had been misinformed. The Pasha was not a tall military figure, nor was he by any means a Gordon. He was simply Emin Pasha, with a greatness peculiar to himself. He was like unto none that we had met before, but he was like unto some, perhaps, that we had read of. We knew nothing positively detracting from our high conception of him. What we saw was entirely in his favour. We witnessed what we conceived to be a high state of discipline among the troops; we saw the steamers, and the admirable state they were in; we thought we saw evidences of a strong civilising and ruling influence; we obtained specimens of the cloth his people had manufactured out of cotton grown by themselves; we had a plentiful supply of liquor distilled from fermented millet; he was exquisitely clean in person; prim, precise, withal courteous in manner; he was extremely kind and affable, accomplished in literature, an entertaining conversationalist, a devoted physician, an altogether gentle man, whom to know was to admire. Had we parted with him at this time we should have come away from his presence simply charmed with him. No, decidedly he was not a Gordon; he differed greatly from Gordon in some things--as, for example, in his devotion to science, in his careful attention to details, in his liberal and charitable views of men and things, in his high desire to elevate and instruct men in practical usefulness, and his noble hopefulness of the land which was the scene of his efforts. But while we admired him, a suspicion fixed itself in our minds that there was something inexplicable about him. He sent a clerk and an Egyptian lieutenant to speak with me. To my amazement they roundly abused him. Each word they uttered they emphasized with hate and indescribable scorn.