THROUGH THE ENCHANTED FOREST 



popped out of the forest to find ourselves on a new 

 level. The Fourth Bench had been attained. 



It was a grass country of many low, rounded hills 

 and dipping valleys, with fine isolated oaklike trees 

 here and there in the depressions, and compact, 

 beautiful oaklike groves thrown over the hills like 

 blankets. Well-kept, green, trim, intimate, it should 

 have had church spires and gray roofs in appropri- 

 ate spots. It was a refreshment to the eye after 

 the great and austere spaces among which we had 

 been dwelling, a repose to the spirit after the alert 

 and dangerous lands. The dark curtained forest 

 seemed, fancifully, an enchantment through which 

 we had gained to this remote smiling land, nearest 

 of all to the blue sky. 



We continued south for two days; and then, as 

 the narrative will show, were forced to return. We 

 found it always the same type; pleasant sleepy little 

 valleys winding around and between low hills 

 crowned with soft groves and forests. It was for 

 all the world like northern Surrey, or like some of 

 the liveoak country of California. Only this we 

 soon discovered: in spite of the enchantment of the 

 magic-protecting forest, the upper benches, too, were 

 subject to the spell that lies over all Africa. These 

 apparently little valleys were in reality the matter 

 of an hour's journey to cross; these rounded hills, 



329 



