Sometimes we were invited out, or invited friends, and this was varied by long excursions, riding, driving, walking, or boating. We generally knew every stick and stone for fifty miles round the place we lived in, and, of course, larger travels or camp life varied again from this. Camp life for me would begin two hours before dawn, when I would see the horses watered, fed, groomed, and saddled, and somebody else the striking of the tents, the packing and loading of the baggage animals. At dawn we started, and we rode until the sun was impossibly hot. We then called a halt, got shade if we could, loosened the girths, watered our beasts and ourselves if possible, fed them and ourselves if we could, and in all cases rested. After about a couple of hours we went on again till sunset. We then bivouacked for the night. If we were amongst any tribes, his diwan was spread, _chibouks_ and lemonade were prepared, and he sat in state and received chiefs or notables. I used to walk off with the horses, and went through the whole detail again of changing saddle and bridle for clothing and halter, cooling, watering, feeding, clothing, picketing, and then back to the tent to join the party in a humble and unostentatious manner as would become a young man, _if I were posing as such_--say a son or a dependant. Once the visits were over we had supper, and to bed, and to-morrow _da capo_. During our last three and a half years we were both broken down, though I am still alive to tell the tale, and we had to forget what we _used_ to do, and train down to what we _could_ do; but I look back with comfort and pride on the reflection that during our thirty years of married life we never lost a minute, and that it was all occupied in trying to "soar," and not to "drop." The word always in his mouth was "work, work, work," and his motto always, "Excelsior!" He had another peculiarity on which he rather prided himself. In his latter years about most things he was excessively open--in fact, I used to be rather surprised and sometimes worried at the way in which he talked quite openly of his plans before utter strangers, and corresponded freely about literature with people he had never seen, and I often think that he came to a great deal of harm that way, that untrue people were apt to trade upon it; and, on the other hand, on the things he really felt most, he prided himself on his secrecy, and was very fond of _hiding things_. I used to tell him he was a regular magpie, because in the end he hid them so well that he used to have to come and call me to try and find them.