CHAPTER XIII 
A MORNING’S RIDE THROUGH RHINO 
COUN ERY 
\ HEN the weather is fine I always breakfast in the 
open by the glowing embers of the watch-fire of the 
night before. Just as I had finished my meal this morning, 
the sun’s rim rose on the plain — my back was to the sunrise 
—and quickly out of the gray dawning light a perfect rain- 
bow shaped itself, so near, so clear, that one could surely 
mark the very spot where would at last be found by some- 
body the “golden key” which, as every well-educated child 
knows, or used to know, lies hidden in the ground at the place 
the rainbow starts from. There was not yet enough sun- 
shine to make the edges of this sunrise rainbow very distinct, 
but the arch of it was very high and very perfect, and in the 
middle of its great bow all the morning vapours had taken on 
a soft rosy tinge wonderful to see. 
“*A rainbow at morning the shepherd’s warning,” says 
the old Scotch saw. At the Equator nature will not b 
bound by the rigid rules of the North, so my rainbow ushered 
in a delightful day. 
I have said that there was but little colour among the trees 
and shrubs of this part of Africa. But its very rarity makes 
its presence all the more welcome when you do light on it. 
Here to-day as I ride is colour indeed. It brushes against 
my mule, raises its sweetness to my face, hangs on all 
sides ready to be plucked and appreciated. Our way winds 
among scattered thickets of a straggling gray bush not 
particularly noticeable till its flowering time comes — which 
seems to last many weeks — but stop then and examine what 
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