THE CENTRAL PLATEAU 



and the hills and ranges of mountains rising from 

 them, and their infinite diversity of country 

 their rivers marked by ribbons of jungle, their scat- 

 tered-bush and their thick-bush areas, their grass 

 expanses, and their great distances extending far 

 over exceedingly wide horizons. Realize how many 

 weary hours you must travel to gain the nearest 

 butte, what days of toil the view from its top will 

 disclose. Savour the fact that you can spend months 

 in its veriest corner without exhausting its pos- 

 sibilities. Then, and not until then, raise your eyes 

 to the low rising transverse range that bands it to 

 the west as the thorn desert bands it to the east. 



And on these ranges are the forests, the great 

 bewildering forests. In what looks like a grove lying 

 athwart a little hill you can lose yourself for days. 

 Here dwell millions of savages in an apparently un- 

 touched wilderness. Here rises a snow mountain 

 on the equator. Here are tangles and labyrinths, 

 great bamboo forests lost in folds of the mightiest 

 hills. Here are the elephants. Here are the swing- 

 ing vines, the jungle itself. 



Yet finally it breaks. We come out on the edge 

 of things and look down on a great gash in the earth. 

 It is like a sunken kingdom in itself, miles wide, with 

 its own mountain ranges, its own rivers, its own land- 

 scape features. Only on either side of it rise the 



33 



