UGANDA JOURNAL.


 He was, however, an inveterate smoker-of thin black cheroots. Only once do
I find him smoking a pipe, and never a cigarette, though he owned a cigarette
holder, and also a gold cigarette case, until Bones borrowed it for a conjuring
trick and inadvertently dropped it overboard the Zaire.

 His favourite recreation was fishing, for which the river and the sea coast,
where he lived, offered unlimited opportunities. He was also fond of walking
and swimming, and occasionally did a bit of shooting, mostly for the pot. He de-
voted much care and attention to the Residency gardens. Indoors his occupations
were reading the Times, (6) and, in the evenings, a hand at picquet.

 He was the kind of man, who pretended to himself that he had no use for
women, but, like many men of this type, he was a self-deceiver, and when con-
fronted with ladies who would make him a suitable match, he fell for them pretty
easily. Only two such are mentioned. One was an attractive lady medical mission-
ary, who only forestalled a proposal by revealing the fact that her heart was
already given to another man in England. The second was Hamilton's sister,
Patricia, who came out to stay at the Residency, and eventually became Mrs.
Sanders. Patricia was exactly the right type, and I have no doubt achieved the
task of reforming Sanders from his bachelor habits with all due tact and circum-
spection. But I would hazard the opinion that Sanders might easily have fallen
a prey to a designing female of a less desirable type, had such an one chanced to
come along and set about him in the right way.

 Though in general a simple soul in matters outside his official duties, Sanders
was by no means devoid of business sense. He saved a good part of his pay,
and made shrewd investments. In particular he had bought land for a song in
Lagos in his early days, which afterwards, as he had expected, appreciated
enormously in value owing to building developments, and before he was 40 he
had accumulated a capital of over 10,000. Yet a further source of income
was from damages obtained in libel actions. (7) He is described, as well he might
be, as examining his pass-book with a complacent self-satisfaction. On one oc-
casion, after his retirement, he nearly fell from grace, when he was on the point
of investing 5000 in a fraudulent West African Trading Company, from which
predicament he was rescued in the nick of time by Bones, then at the height
of his successful career as a financier in the City.

 Sanders is described as being usually extremely reluctant to go on leave,
the reasons being that he had little confidence in the person or persons deputed
to act in his absence, and that he did not know how to pass the time when he
was in England, apart from aimlessly wandering about the streets of London;
though he once, at least, gave a lecture on Tribal Customs and Folklore to a
certain learned Society for African Studies. In consequence he allowed arrears
of leave to accumulate, and, sometimes by preference, spent his leave locally
in Africa. Here is an account of one such occasion:-

 (6) And sometimes Blue Books.
 (7) See p. 14 below.