258 THE LAND OF THE LION 
heavier in quality than in our northern woods, they are 
more rounded, they branch more luxuriantly. 
Now in October, as though following the custom of 
far other lands, they have ripened into a dull burnt gold, 
sometimes deepening into a fine crimson. 
Nor are all the flowers gone. From the abrupt edges 
of the wood, where it meets the yellow grass, salvias grow 
luxuriantly; sometimes filling spaces in the curving forest 
line with banks of purple flower that rise fifteen or even 
twenty feet to meet the spreading boughs stretched out to 
shade them. 
I halted my mule on the highest ridge of the great 
sweep of down, from which first, many months before, I 
had seen, far away to northward, Sergoit summit stand 
out pink in the evening light. 
Good-bye, Sergoit! What changes has not your gray 
head looked down on! In ages long ago that softly out- 
lined purple Elgon that now faces you to the west was 
pouring forth devastating tides of lava from the rocky 
lips of the great crater that this evening are sharply out- 
lined against the crimson sky. And the wide plain, almost 
to your base, was a sea of fire. 
Then the tropic rains and scorching suns did their 
faithful work, till the land grew rich and green, and forests 
smoothed away the harsh wrinkles that Elgon had plowed 
on the face of the country. 
Then came the wild life, man’s and beast’s, much 
of it almost the same as it is to-day. Tribes rose and 
perished, surged forward, fell backward. 
Our poor, forgotten Sarequa built the stone kraals 
that lie around your feet, and no doubt many a bloody 
fight you beheld, before the attacking spear men forced 
their narrow stone entrances. 
Then came the groaning slave gang, toiling along its bone- 
strewn way tothe sea. You have looked down on it all. 
