ii6 THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 



the mere sight of the crown of a helmet over a bush 

 would send them flying with a thunder of hoofs that 

 fairly made the earth tremble, again, I actually had 

 several hundred animals trek solemnly toward the 

 sound of my rifle to investigate for themselves what 

 it was all about! Most of the time they hardly 

 looked up from grazing when they were not too 

 near. 



Four hours; 9 miles; elevation, 5,200; morning, 64; 

 noon, 80; night, 73. 



August 21. — Heard wild dogs in the night. I got 

 up in the black night, ate my solitary breakfast by the 

 flicker of a fire, and then, just as the first milky gray 

 was seeping into the darkness, I started out for a walk. 

 The ground was not to be seen at all, nor the objects 

 near the ground, only the tops of trees like ghosts. We 

 stumbled and moved slowly, feeling our way. All 

 about us we could hear beasts snorting at us, like 

 mettlesome horses stamping on the earth; or perhaps 

 we heard the short swift rush of them as they dashed 

 away. Only when they moved could we see them, 

 phantoms, bits of the same dim substance of all the 

 rest of the world. They were puzzled at us, and 

 curious, and very near. 



And all the time the flames were spreading in the 

 sky, the fierce, hot red and copper and orange flames 

 of the African sunrise. They reflected on the earth. 

 We could see a little better, guess a little more. Then 



