In Wildest Africa ^ 



of their scent are used as ornaments by warriors and 



maidens : " Il-kak ooitaa '1 muran oo 'a dolye '1 



oropili." ^ So there pass before us Masai maidens and 

 Masai warriors decked with Elelescho leaves and Elelescho 

 branches, and received with sympathetic smiles by the 

 caravan leaders — who, however, unlike the Masai, think 

 very little of It. Very simple and naive are the relations 

 of these natives with nature around them. Only the 

 obvious, the actually useful, comes Into their thoughts, 

 and for my black companions the Elelescho always recalls 

 only memories of poor desert regions of the waste — regions 

 in which they must often endure hunger and suffer many 

 hardships. Far different Is the Influence of the Elelescho 

 region on my feelings. For me this bush Is symbolically 

 linked with the plunge into uninhabited solitudes, with 

 self-liberation from the pressure of the civilisation of 

 modern men and all its haste and hurry. 



We wish to feel once more, and to give ourselves up 

 fully to, the spell of the Elelescho — the charm of the 

 Elelescho thickets, that are also In South Africa In the 

 lands about the Cape the characteristic mark of the velt, 

 now so lonely, but once alive with hundreds of thousands 

 of wild herds. 



A wonderful night has come on. 



The moon — in a few days it will be at the full — sheds 

 its beams In glittering splendour over Lake Nakuro. 



The little camp Is scon wrapped In silence. The 

 weary bearers sink into deep and well-earned slumber. 

 Only the sentries, pushed far out, are on the alert. It 

 1 As Hoi lis tells us. 



48 



