INTO THE BLUE 13 



Fred Harvey's on our own Santa Fe. Also there 

 were stands from which the natives sold cigarettes 

 and fruit. 



When we were awakened next morning by the red 

 sun streaming in on our berth we fotmd ourselves in a 

 new belt. The cocoanut palms near the coast and 

 the scrubby country through which we passed in 

 the late afternoon had been left behind. All aroimd 

 us was a vast plain as far as the eye could reach, 

 sentinelled by an occasional thorn bush or acacia 

 and btdwarked in the distance by low-lying violet 

 hills. At the stations the natives wore skins instead 

 of khaki and mother hubbards, and carried shields 

 and spears. Since daybreak we had been seeing wild 

 animals. 



What a joy it was, after six gruelling months in 

 civilization, to see again the real Africa we had come 

 so to love. 



On either side of the track far to the distant hills, 

 perhaps thirty miles away, the plain was covered 

 with vast herds of game; horned and bearded wilde- 

 beeste or gnus, ugly tusked wart-hogs, cunning little 

 mongrel-like jackals, long-necked giraffe, gazelles, 

 kongoni, ostriches, and striped clouds of zebra. Our 

 queer beast of iron that ran on rails seemed to bother 

 them not at all ; indeed they scarcely looked up from 

 their grazing as we roared past, for they had long 

 since learned that a locomotive is not carnivorous. 



