THE FIRST CAMP 



did not look like Africa. That is to say, it looked 

 altogether too much like any amount of country at 

 home. There was nothing strange and exotic about 

 it. We crossed a little plain, and up over a small 

 hill, down into a shallow canon that seemed to be 

 wooded with live oaks, across a grass valley or so, and 

 around a grass hill. Then we went into camp at the 

 edge of another grass valley, by a stream across 

 which rose some ordinary low cliffs. 



That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot 

 of this country it is so much like home. Of 

 course, there are many wide districts exotic enough in 

 all conscience the jungle beds of the rivers, the 

 bamboo forests, the great tangled forests themselves, 

 the banana groves down the aisles of which dance 

 savages with shields but so very much of it is 

 familiar. One needs only church spires and a red- 

 roofed village or so to imagine one's self in Surrey. 

 There is any amount of country like Arizona, and 

 more like the uplands of Wyoming, and a lot of it 

 resembling the smaller landscapes of New England. 

 The prospects of the whole world are there, so that 

 somewhere every wanderer can find the countryside 

 of his own home repeated. And, by the same token, 

 that is exactly what makes a good deal of it so start- 

 ling. When a man sees a file of spear-armed sav- 

 ages, or a pair of snorty old rhinos, step out into 



41 



