Lying thus awake but restful, the blended noises of the resounding forest fall upon the passive ear like the confused echo of some world-orchestra, or a broken strain from the music of the planets and the stars as they sweep through vast orbits, on and on forever. For the night-forest, unlike the day, speaks always musically to the ear that is attuned to hear it. The soft sound of the wind among the leaves of the highest branches again lulls the wakeful listener into sleep; and he enjoys it the more because of the brief disturbance. VI A HOME IN THE BUSH Efulen, my first African home, I saw for the first time in July 1893. It is in Cameroon, among the Bulu people, directly behind Batanga, less than sixty miles from the coast, and about two hundred miles north of the equator. Efulen is situated upon a hill two hundred and fifty feet high and nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level, and is surrounded by mountains. The scenery is beautiful and magnificent and resembles the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania; but in that tropical climate there are atmospheric effects seldom seen in the colder latitudes. Mountain and valley are covered with a forest of green with here and there a tree of red or scarlet, and so dense that one might think he could walk on it. From the top of Efulen hill one looks out on a rolling plain of foliage that stretches away over valley and hill, until it becomes extinct in the dim distance of the empurpled hills. Often in the morning, when the atmosphere of the valleys is clear, an overhanging mist cuts off the tops of the mountains, which appear as elevated table-lands, all of the same height, and precisely level. A few minutes later the scene is magically transformed. The mist has descended and filled the valleys as if all the clouds of the heavens had fallen down, while the mountain-peaks, radiant with the sunlight, rise out of the mist like islands out of a deep sea. I have said that Dr. Good had already made one journey into this interior. He chose Efulen for the site of the new mission station, and set natives to work cutting down trees and clearing the top of the hill. The name _Efulen_, which we afterwards gave it, was first used by the natives themselves. It is from a Bulu word, _fula_, which means to mix; for they never had seen such a mingling of people, of different towns and even hostile tribes, as they saw daily on our hill, where all could come with safety.