UGANDA JOURNAL.


phor, and he is said to have spent much of his time in the evenings poring over
the Grammar which one of his missionary hosts was compiling, noting down words,
expressions and proverbs-not knowing then in the least how he was going to
make use of them.
 Though he wrote an article on "Congo Atrocities" for a missionary public-
ation, nothing from the pen of Wallace about this subject ever appeared in the
columns of the Daily Mail. Apparently he did submit a report but Lord North-
cliffe (then Sir Alfred Harmsworth) had recently been landed with an expensive
libel action through a report of Wallace's on another subject. He was not taking
any more risks, and in fact dismissed Wallace from the staff of Carmelite House
soon after his return from Africa.
 After this our author passed through a lean period, from which he was deliver-
ed by the publication of the first of the "Sanders" books.
 This occurred when he was on the verge of bankruptcy, with a bailiff in the
house and all the family valuables in pawn, and when, owing to his unlucky
record, no publisher or editor seemed to want his work. He had had, however,
some articles accepted by a paper called The Weekly Tale-teller, of which the
Fiction Editor was Mrs. Isabel Thorne. One day, when on his way to a meeting
of the Congo Reform Association, at which he was to speak, he met Mrs.
Thorne accidentally on the top of a bus, told her whither he was bound and re-
lated to her some of his African experiences and reminiscences. She at once
said to him that if he wanted material for short stories he had already got it.
The conversation continued while he accompanied her to London Bridge Station,
where she was catching a train, and for some time after while they walked up
and down the platform. Both were so thrilled with the possibilities that he for-
got all about his Congo Meeting and she, deliberately, missed several trains,
before they went their respective ways. Thus it was in the extremely un-African
and unromantic, not to say sordid, atmosphere of a London Bridge platform
that "Sanders of the River" was conceived.
 When he got home Wallace at once dug out his Congo notes and set to
work to sketch out a series of stories of Tropical Africa. He transposed the
Congo into a great river running through the middle of an unspecified British
Territory on the West Coast; he set in charge of it his Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
apparently a composite portrait of several African Administrators, including Sir
Harry Johnston; he converted the Lo-mongo of the Congo into the Bo-mongo (3) of
the West Coast; and he transported some of the tribes that spoke it, with whom
he was familiar, to that coast also. In some cases, as for instance in that of the
Ngombi, he did not even trouble to change their names.
 Within a very few days he was able to set before Mrs. Thorne an outline of
several stories, and each one was discussed minutely with her. It appears that it
was she who was in part responsible for the creation, as a foil, of Bosambo, the
native chief who combined unswerving fidelity, and a hundred per cent. efficiency
in all essentials, with a most engaging and unscrupulous rascality in minor matters,
particularly in the picking up of unconsidered trifles.

 (3) I cannot bring myself to call it 'Mongo'.