144 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



whydah birds of a new kind, with red on the head and 

 throat, and brilliantly colored woodpeckers, and black-and- 

 gold weaver-birds. Indeed, the wealth of bird life was 

 such that it cannot be described. Here, too, there were 

 many birds with musical voices, to which we listened in the 

 early morning. The best timber was yielded by the tall 

 mahogo tree, a kind of sandal-wood. This was the tree 

 selected by the wild fig for its deadly embrace. The wild 

 fig begins as a huge parasitic vine, and ends as one of the 

 largest and most stately, and also one of the greenest and 

 most shady, trees in this part of Africa. It grows up the 

 mahogo as a vine and gradually, by branching, and by the 

 spreading of the branches, completely envelops the trunk 

 and also grows along each limb, and sends out great limbs 

 of its own. Every stage can be seen, from that in which 

 the big vine has begun to grow up along the still flourishing 

 mahogo, through that in which the tree looks like a curious 

 composite, the limbs and thick foliage of the fig branching 

 out among the limbs and scanty foliage of the still living 

 mahogo, to the stage in which the mahogo is simply a dead 

 skeleton seen here and there through the trunk or the foliage 

 of the fig. Finally nothing remains but the fig, which grows 

 to be a huge tree. 



Heatley's house was charming, with its vine-shaded 

 veranda, its summer-house and out-buildings, and the 

 great trees clustered round about. He was fond of sport in 

 the right way, that is, he treated it as sport and not busi- 

 ness, and did not allow it to interfere with his prime work 

 of being a successful farmer. He had big stock-yards 

 for his cattle and swine, and he was growing all kinds of 

 things of both the temperate and the tropic zones: wheat 



