THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 185 



travelling hard for the mules. The soil was more often 

 clay than sand, and it was slippery when wet. The weather 

 was overcast, and there was usually no oppressive heat 

 even at noon. At intervals along the trail we came on the 

 staring skull and bleached skeleton of a mule or ox. Day 

 after day we rode forward across endless flats of grass and 

 of low open scrubby forest, the trees standing far apart 

 and in most places being but little higher than the head 

 of a horseman. Some of them carried blossoms, white, 

 orange, yellow, pink; and there were many flowers, the 

 most beautiful being the morning-glories. Among the trees 

 were bastard rubber-trees, and dwarf palmetto; if the lat- 

 ter grew more than a few feet high their tops were torn 

 and dishevelled by the wind. There was very little bird 

 or mammal life; there were few long vistas, for in most 

 places it was not possible to see far among the gray, gnarled 

 trunks of the wind-beaten little trees. Yet the desolate 

 landscape had a certain charm of its own, although not 

 a charm that would be felt by any man who does not 

 take pleasure in mere space, and freedom and wildness, 

 and in plains standing empty to the sun, the wind, and 

 the rain. The country bore some resemblance to the 

 country west of Redjaf on the White Nile, the home of 

 the giant eland; only here there was no big game, no 

 chance of seeing the towering form of the giraff^e, the black 

 bulk of elephant or buffalo, the herds of straw-colored 

 hartebeests, or the ghostly shimmer of the sun glinting on 

 the coats of roan and eland as they vanished silently in 

 the gray sea of withered scrub. 



One feature in common with the African landscape 

 was the abundance of ant-hills, some as high as a man. 



