AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



to all seeming only two good golf strokes from 

 bottom to top, were matters of serious climbing; 

 these compact, squared groves of oaklike trees were 

 actually great forests of giants in which one could 

 lose one's self for days, in which roamed herds of 

 elephant and buffalo. It looked compact because 

 we could see all its constituent elements. As a 

 matter of fact, it was neat and tidy; only we were, as 

 usual, too small for it. 



At the end of two hours' fast marching we had 

 made the distance, say, from the clubhouse to the 

 second hole. Then we camped in a genuinely little 

 grove of really small trees overlooking a green valley 

 bordered with wooded hills. The prospect was 

 indescribably delightful; a sort of Sunday-morning 

 landscape of groves and green grass and a feeling of 

 church bells. 



Only down the valley, diminished by distance, 

 all afternoon Masai warriors, in twos and threes, 

 trooped by, mincing along so that their two ostrich 

 feathers would bob up and down, their spears held 

 atrail. 



We began to realize that we were indeed in a new 

 country when our noon thermometer registered only 

 66, and when at sunrise the following morning it 

 stood at 44. To us, after eight months under the 

 equator, this was bitter weather! 



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