Festivities in Toro I. CHRISTMAS. Can it be that this is the season that in one’s mind is always associated with snow, Jack Frost, Santa Claus, shops and streets ablaze with gas jets, holly and mistletoe, people hurrying and jostling each other good naturedly, wrapped up in the warmest furs to keep out the crisp, frosty air, and wishing each and all the compliments of the season. Yes, it is really Yuletide! And yet the hills and dales are waving their ripening grain under the deep sapphire of a cloudless sky. The dry season is near its close, hills and mountains are scorched and parched, the banana groves and the tiger grass of the swamps which wind like a serpent’s trail round the base of the hills, are the only bright and green tracks that have survived the conflict with the equatorial sun. On all sides are to be seen tiny patches of cultivated land, even reaching up to the lofty peaks of Ruwenzori’s range, where the people have sown their grain (Buro), and this will soon be ready for the harvesters. In the garden round our bungalow mud house are gorgeous zinnias, balsams, mignonette, carnations, sweet peas, geraniums, nasturtiums, and two little rose buds. A few steps further will bring you round to the vegetable garden. One gardener being an Irishman, potatoes are very much in evidence, and of course cabbages. Besides these there are cauliflowers, green peas, beans, celery, only wanting the nip of frost to make it excellent, lettuces, beetroots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, and turnips. And yet this is Christmastime! It is little wonder that one has constantly to revert to the calendar to be assured of this. And so we set to work to get the little gifts together that our kind friends from home sent us for our native friends—knives, pencils, bags, sashes, blotters, and so on. The wee tots from the school come down for their attendance prizes, and go away beaming with their new possession of a pinafore. Then the oxen are killed, and on the day before Christmas all the sick folk come to the “missionary butcher” and hobble off rejoicing with their joint of beef wrapped up in a banana leaf. And, although Father Christmas has assumed a black face in Africa, he does not pass by the white man’s door, and he leaves his gifts of a grass mat, animal’s skin, beans, beads, or bracelets, the only things with which he can fill his Toro sack. At 12.0 a.m. on Christmas Eve from the King’s, the Queen Mother’s, and the Mission Hills the drums are set beating, and from the English forts the guns are fired to proclaim to all the country that the Christian’s day of rejoicing has dawned, for the Christ child—Immanuel—has come. Then on the midnight air is borne the strains of “O come all ye faithful” and “Hark the herald angels,” sung by some of those who have been redeemed from the heart of Darkest Africa, and now step out from their little huts to join with us in praising God.