In Wildest Africa ^ 



and elelescho bushes, impenetrable to men but affording 

 a refuge to animals, even to elephants. On the day before 

 I had noted the fact that Masai warriors had recently 

 encamped in the neighbourhood, with cattle which they 

 had got hold of on a marauding expedition (and some of 

 which they had here slaughtered), and that with their booty 

 they had betaken themselves over the English frontier. 

 It was quite on the cards that roaming young Masai 

 warriors would suddenly turn up while I was there. It 

 was several days' journey to the nearest inhabited region. 

 For weeks together one would see no human soul save 

 for a nomadic hunter every now and again. 



The great barren wilderness, which then in the dry 

 season could boast of no verdure save the evergreen 

 Hunger-plant, so well suited to the arid velt ; the romantic 

 site of my camp ; the beautiful moonlight night, darkened 

 over from time to time by great masses of clouds, heralding 

 the approach of rain ; the dangers lurking all around : 

 everything conspired to produce a wonderful effect upon 

 the mind. The night had come upon us silently, mys- 

 teriously, jet-black. Before the moon rose, one's fancy 

 foreshadowed some sudden incursion into the death-like 

 darkness, the bodeful silence. There was something weird 

 and unnatural about the stillness — it suggested the calm 

 before the storm. Faint rustlings and cracklings and 

 voices inaudible by day now made themselves heard. 

 The world of the little living things came by its own, 

 and crackled and rustled among plants and branches and 

 reeds and grass. Hark ! Is that the sound of a cock- 

 chafer or a mouse, or is it the footstep of a foe ? . . . 



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