280 THE LAND OF THE LION 
pots. These are hollow logs of wood some four feet 
long, and ten inches or a foot in diameter. A hole at one 
end admits the swarm. Bees seem to find it hard to secure 
a safe place to store their honey in any part of the country 
not heavily wooded, and so the poor things too readily 
accept the deceptive hospitality provided by the wild man 
for their undoing. In they go, and soon the rude hive is 
filled with rich comb. Twice a year the honey lover 
comes, smothers the lot, and hangs again in the same tree 
the hollow log. JI counted seven of them in one tree that 
morning. 
The thorn tree when it gains any size is beautiful to 
look upon. The sportsman and traveller, for all its prickly 
welcome, owe it no small debt. Its sparse shade is most 
welcome by day, there is often no other, and its hard tough 
wood makes an incomparably good fire by night; no wood 
that I have seen anywhere burns so warmly or so long. No 
deluge can put it out, and last but not least, it makes a 
grand cooking fire. It has another charm, vz., the beautiful 
soft golden green bark that covers its limbs and stem. 
The feathery flat spreading branches do not shut out the 
sunshine, and when after drenching rain the sun comes 
out the graceful lines of the glossy branches are most 
beautiful to look upon. 
As we wound along the hillsides, and climbed up and 
down the rocky gorges that ran to the river, the weird 
sound of the sefari’s piping came from the rear. How 
they manage to keep it up was always a wonder tome. Of 
pipers we had two; one favoured a short reed pipe from 
which he was never parted; he always carried it in one 
of the many corners of the bundle of rags that served him 
for a coat. The other produced a shriller tone from a 
water-buck’s horn. I love the sound of that rude piping. 
Whence it comes, that sad minor tune, no one can tell. 
It reminded me of another sunny morning when I sat on 
