BRITISH EAST AFKICA (continued) 



OUR road lay for the most part through well-wooded 

 country, having for its centre-piece a fascinating little 

 stream. Fires had swept along the banks, but here 

 and there were shady nooks and corners fresh 

 and smiling with every shade of green. Overhead 

 white masses performed their daily evolutions. I 

 have never seen such a land for clouds as is Africa. 

 The mornings are clear. About noon little white 

 fluffy bits of cotton- wool came floating up, " out of the 

 everywhere into the here," to spy out the land. Then, 

 as if by magic, battalions and armies of them fill the 

 heavens, each distinct and separate. A hard-cut line, 

 such as you see in old engravings, marks them out 

 below ; above, they are full of soft curves and dazzling 

 domes. Later, as the sun lies dying, they mingle and 

 coalesce into great white thrones for gods and god- 

 desses, clean and pure where the falling rays strike, 

 and holding on their earthward side deep blues and 

 sensuous purple loveliness, as though all that was 

 base and evil in them shrank from the clean freshness 

 of the upper heights. Then from bright sunlit glades, 

 with all the blue of God's heaven above and the plea- 

 sant messages of water running beneath a clear sky, we 



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