388 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



After leaving the elephant camp we journeyed through 

 country for the most part covered with an open forest 

 growth. The trees were chiefly acacias. Among them 

 were interspersed huge candelabra euphorbias, all in 

 bloom, and now and then one of the brilliant red flowering 

 trees, which never seem to carry many leaves at the same 

 time with their gaudy blossoms. At one place for miles 

 the open forest was composed of the pod-bearing, thick- 

 leafed trees on which we had found the elephants feeding; 

 their bark and manner of growth gave them somewhat 

 the look of jack-oaks; where they made up the forest, 

 growing well apart from one another, it reminded us of the 

 cross-timbers of Texas and Oklahoma. The grass was 

 everywhere three or four feet high; here and there were 

 patches of the cane-like elephant grass, fifteen feet high. 



It was pleasant to stride along the road in the early 

 mornings, followed by the safari, and we saw many a glo- 

 rious sunrise. But as noon approached it grew very hot, 

 under the glare of the brazen equatorial sun, and we were 

 always glad when we approached our new camp, with its 

 grass-strewn ground, its wickerwork fence, and cool, open 

 rest house. The local sub-chief and his elders were usually 

 drawn up to receive me at the gate, bowing, clapping their 

 hands, and uttering their long-drawn e-h-h-s; and often 

 banana saplings or branches would be stuck in the ground 

 to form avenues of approach, and the fence and rest-house 

 might be decorated with flowers of many kinds. Some- 

 times we were met with music, on instruments of one 

 string, of three strings, of ten strings rudimentary fiddles 

 and harps; and there was a much more complicated in- 

 strument, big and cumbrous, made of bars of wood placed 



