A DRAMATIC EPISODE 297 



boos always steadily climbing. The trail was 

 fairly good and our progress was encouraging. 



There were many elephant pits in the bamboo 

 forest, but they were all ancient ones, half-filled 

 with decayed leaves and obviously unused for half 

 a century or more. From some of them fairly large- 

 sized trees had grown. Sometimes in the midst of 

 these great, silent, light-green forests we came upon 

 giant trees, tangled and gnarled, with trunks 

 twenty or thirty feet in circumference. In vain we 

 looked for the impassable trail the natives had 

 warned us to expect. 



Late in the afternoon we came to a wonderful 

 cave, over the mouth of which a wonderful fan- 

 shaped waterfall dropped seventy feet or more. 

 My aneroid barometer indicated an elevation of 

 eighty-two hundred feet, showing that we had 

 climbed twenty-seven hundred feet since morning. 

 We found a little clearing in the bamboo forest 

 and pitched our tents on ground that sloped down 

 like the roof of a house. The clearing was barely 

 fifty yards long, yet our twenty or more tents were 

 pitched, our horses tethered in the middle, and the 

 camp-fires crackled merrily as the chill air of night 

 came down upon us. From the forest came the mul- 

 titude of sounds that told of strange birds and ani- 

 mals that were out on their nocturnal hunt for food. 



Early in the morning the safari was sent on with 

 the guides while we remained to explore the cave. 

 It was an immense cavern, with an entrance hall, or 

 foyer, about thirty feet high and a hundred feet in 



