178 IN AFRICA 



African forest could be. It more than fulfilled 

 the preconceptions of a tropical forest such as you 

 see described in stories of the Congo and the Ama- 

 zon. 



The air was cold in the shadows, but pleasant in 

 the little open glades that occasionally spread out 

 before us. Once or twice in the heart of that over- 

 whelming forest we found little circular clearings 

 so devoid of trees as to seem like artificial clearings. 

 Once we found the skull of an elephant and scores 

 of times we narrowly escaped the deep elephant 

 traps that lay in our paths. Many times we saw 

 evidences of the giant forest pig that lives on 

 Mount Kenia and has only once or twice been killed 

 by a white man. Sometimes we came to deep ravines 

 with sides that led for a hundred feet almost per- 

 pendicularly through tangles of creepers and bogs 

 of rotted vegetation. 



We dragged ourselves up by clinging to vines 

 and monkey ropes. On all sides was a solitude so 

 vast as almost to overpower the senses. The sounds 

 of bird life seemed only to intensify the effect of 

 solitude. Once in a while we came upon evidences 

 of human habitation, little huts of twigs and leaves, 

 where the Wanderobo, or man of the forest, lived 

 and hunted. Up in some of the trees were thin 

 cylindrical wooden honey pots, some of them ages 

 old and some comparatively new. And in the lower 

 levels of the forest we saw where the Kikuyu 

 women had come up for firewood. For some 

 strange reason the elephants are not afraid of the 



