58 THE LAND OF THE LION 
actually working them. Everything is tied up, no one 
is benefited or satisfied. 
These forests are their own insurance agents against fire. 
Try as you may, you cannot burn them down. No casual 
farmer living on their edges, even if he take what his house 
and farm need from their wealth, can do them any harm. 
And, till a special branch line is built, and great outlay 
undertaken, of course no real attack can be made on the 
lumber. So long, therefore, as reasonable conditions. 
are attached to any farms granted, the timber is pretty safe. 
But the concession of the Mau forest or a great part of it, 
does serious harm in another way. 
Every foot of the road from Londiani to the river that 
bounds this region, and is the actual dividing line between 
it and Sergoit plain, a distance of seventy miles 
—runs through the “concession” —the land has been 
granted as well as the wood, land fine as can be seen. 
And so, year after year, enviously and angrily, the would-be 
settler tramps behind his wagon those seventy long miles, 
cursing a system of favouritism, which forces him to move 
mile after mile farther away from the railroad and the 
market, while here are uncounted farms, wooded, sheltered, 
healthy, nearer home, occupied by no one, yet denied to him. 
He, ready to work and willing to pay, reasonably enough 
asks: ‘‘Where are the signs of either work done, or pay 
made to the Government, for this splendid demesne ?” 
The forest is very silent. Now and then is heard the 
chattering call of the monkey, ensconced far above mother 
earth, in his own upper sunny world of the tree tops, and 
occasionally you notice a parrot or a pigeon. Beneath in 
the gloom, the rich loam bears few game signs. Now 
and then the rooting of the bush pig, or a very rare bush 
buck slot —that is all. The thing that impresses you as: 
you struggle through this new vegetable world for the first 
time, is its stubborn obstructiveness. You are not only 
