CHAPTER XXVI 



November 3. — This morning the spoor led us up be- 

 yond the forested belt and into the bamboos. It was 

 like a fairyland — sometimes a rather steep and scrambly 

 fairyland, but full of glades and little levels. The 

 bamboo is of the giant type, thirty to fifty feet tall, 

 and from four to six inches in diameter. The stalk is 

 bright green. Its tendency is to grow evenly thick and 

 impenetrable, but that tendency has been modified by 

 the tramping of generations of elephants, so that in all 

 directions through it are winding paths, short vistas, 

 and tiny open glades. 



Sometimes it is as dark as evening; and as mysteri- 

 ous. Sometimes the light strikes down brilliantly from 

 above. Underfoot the whole surface of the ground is 

 carpeted with tiny feather ferns only an inch or so 

 high, indescribably soft and beautiful. Occasionally in 

 the more open places these spring to the dimensions of 

 bracken. And occasionally, too, we came upon single 

 wide-spreading trees that had cleared themselves a 

 space amid the bamboo, like rest houses beneath which 

 to stop. 



Everything is green — the bamboo stalks, the fine 

 soft ground covering, the damp moss that seems im- 



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