432 THE LAND OF THE LION 
away. ‘The purple forest ridges sending up their morning 
oblation of silvery cloud incense to their lord the sun. 
The measured tramp and tap, tap of the porters’ sticks, 
as the Wanyamwazi column marches steadily into camp. 
The tender wonder of evening light — you see it in 
Africa as nowhere else — flushing not the sky only, but 
rolling in a flood of gold and crimson over the wide- 
flung veldt. 
The delicious cool of the evening, when all work is 
over and the fragrant smoke of thorn wood fires rises 
into the still air. 
The long talks and gradually won confidences, as wild 
men told quietly of deeds done and wrongs suffered, spoke, 
at first hesitatingly, of strange rites observed by them, 
they knew not why. They did as their fathers had done 
before them. 
I shall see the haunting beauty of Kenia’s silvery crown, 
as far up in heaven it rose before me in the twilight, serene, 
virginal, unearthly. And again long black lines of mighty 
elephants will come slowly down from the purple slopes 
of Elgon, and stream across the wide yellow plain. 
My first lion comes forth at last from the shelter of the 
thorn bushes. The morning sun shining full upon him, 
as he turns his massive head toward me. 
It is hard to bid Africa good-bye. But harder far to 
look in the dark faces of the men I have learned to trust — 
my companions and friends — for the last time. These 
true friends and companions of more than a year’s wan- 
dering! How often I shall see them rise before me, as 
again we trudge along in the white glare of the noonday, 
or as their faces are lit up by the leaping flame of the camp 
fire, on glorious African nights! 
There is little Peter, the cook, merry as a grig, tramp- 
ing with his two kettles, one in each hand, all day, cooking 
all the evening, and dancing vigorously in every dance 
