We stayed three days at Lilongwe, and got our clothes washed. we had tried washing them ourselves, in the river, under Nigel's superintendence, and it had been a failure, because we were worse off after we had washed our clothe than we were before. Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it is true. But they were wearable. After we had washed them, well the river for about three miles downstream was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. As the dirt contained in this stretch of river had been collected, during that wash, and worked it into our clothes.

The local Malawi chap who had agreed to wash our clothes said that he felt he owed it to himself to charge us three times the usual price for that wash. He said it had not been like washing, it had been more in the nature of excavating. We paid the bill without murmur.

I don't know why it should be but everybody in a landrover becomes exceptionally irritable when underway. little mishaps that you would hardly notice when at home, drive you nearly frantic with rage when they occur out here. When Nigel or Jon makes an ass of himself back home I would smile indignantly. When they behave in a chuckle headed way here I use the most blood curdling language on them. When one of them gets in my way I feel I want to take jack handle and kill them all. Even the mildest tempered people when in a landrover become violent and bloodthirsty

The air in the landrover has a demoralizing effect upon ones temper and it is this I suppose that causes good friends to be rude to one another and use language which no doubt in their calmer moments they regret.

We went up the mountain at Malange and stayed in these wonderful log cabins. At home they are called shanties. I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have had them all. I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can't get it. Keith said he would have given worlds for mustard too. It would have been a good thing for anyone who had come up to that spot with a can of mustard then; He would have been setup in worlds for the rest of his life.

But there! I dare say both Keith and I would have tried to back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard. One makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes to think of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value of the required article. I heard a man going up a mountain in Switzerland, once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer and when he came to a little shanty where they kept it he kicked up a most fearful row because they charged him five franks for a bottle of what was not even bitter.

It cast a gloom about the cabin, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. I thought of the happy days of childhood and sighed. Nigel  pottered about with the remaining ingredients left in both our rugsacks and when he five minutes later produced the most wonderful pancakes with raisins and banana we both brightened up a bit and felt that life was worth living after all.

We wished that we had stopped at the first cabin. Nine or ten miles miles is a trifle when you are fresh early in the morning, but it is a weary pull at the end of a long day. You take no interest in the scenery during these last few miles. You do not chat and laugh. Every half mile seems like four. You can hardly believe you are where you are and you are convinced that the map must be wrong; and when you have trudged along for what seems to you to be at least twenty miles, and still the cabin is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that somebody must have sneaked it and run off with it.

I remember being terribly upset once up a mountain. I was out with a young lady and we were heading across to Cathkin, a charming little hotel where her father had been persuaded to pick us up. It was getting late and we were anxious to be getting down or at least she was anxious to be getting down. It was half past six when we reached the fork where the down path began. She said that she must be down by supper and I said it was a thing that I also would like to be down for. I drew out a map to see exactly how much further it was. About a mile till the next bend then another three from there. Its all right we'll be able to see the hotel by seven thirty and then its down hill all the way.

It was an hour later when I asked her if she cold see the hotel. She said no and I was surprised. Five minutes later I asked again and she again said that there were no signs of any hotel what so ever. I was certain that the hotel could be no further than three or four hundred yards along this path and that there could be no possibility that we were lost.

Then we came to a sign board that said hotel 3 miles. The sight of those type of notice boards rouses every evil instinct in my nature. I feel I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head of the man who put it up, until I have killed him and then I would bury him and put the board up over the grave as a toumbstone.

I mentioned these feelings to my friend and she said he had them worse. he wished to peg the man alive to the ground with the board and make him read it allowed until he was dead. Then he went on about the rest of his family and how they should also be taught a lesson and that he would not rest until each and every relation had also been pegged to the ground by the sign.. I tried to bring her to a more Christian standpoint was too Herculean a task for me. Ever since this happened I have been a little nervous of this woman.

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