A RIDE THROUGH RHINO COUNTRY = 317 
before you, as you painfully force your way amid the 
dark places of the great woods, but whose feathery boughs 
you never saw before, so densely packed and laced to- 
gether are those forest tops. Here all open to the day- 
light, you can study the gnarled twistings of those splendid 
limbs, and they remind you of one of the trees Rousseau 
has so wonderfully painted, against a background of 
crimson sunsetting, a tree to dream of and but rarely 
seen. Here the wide-spreading chestnut finds all the 
space it needs for its great bouquet-like crown of rich 
lilac blossom, and groups of them take up the whole cafion 
from side to side. The precipitous sides of this cafion. 
have saved them from the yearly devastating grass fire, 
and they sink their roots safely in the cool well watered 
soil. On the plain above grow juniper and olive trees 
in scattered thousands, but all are ragged and scorched. 
The junipers for half their stunted growth are notched 
and unsightly. The olive trees bloom only at the crowns; 
when they live at all they live a life of protest; the hardy 
thorn tree alone shows scarcely any sign of these fierce 
recurrent purgatorial scorchings. 
In the canon fire never comes. Its rocky borders give 
the flames nothing to feed on, and thus it is that within 
it you find a secluded little woodland, naturally matured. 
Darkness and dampness make the African forests 
unpleasant and uninteresting even when they are pene- 
trable, while here are a hundred little green open glades 
where for part of the day the sun shines down. Silver 
gray moss hangs in long waving veils from upper branches. 
Rich orange-coloured mistletoe plants itself wherever it 
can see the sun. Long, delicate tree-ferns find rootage 
in the trees leaning close to the water, and between feathery 
juniper tops bunches of chestnut flowers twenty feet across 
make, with their gray moss wreathing, a colour scheme 
scarcely to be matched, and never to be forgotten. 
