NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA 103 



After securing two bull elephants in the 

 Luangwa I marched towards the Muchingas, 

 and never shall I forget the journey which 

 brought me to the bottom of the range. 



It had been a long, trying march, carried out 

 through a day of memorable heat, memorable 

 even in the valley of the Luangwa, where the 

 thermometer sometimes rises to 118 degrees in 

 the shade, and each breath of fiery wind is 

 wafted as if from the open gates of Hell. Since 

 daybreak we had tramped along native paths, 

 through miniature forests, over rocky hillocks, 

 across laggard streams. My " tenga-tengas " 

 were foot-sore and weary, and so was I. The 

 cruel, glaring glamour of the sun lessened, as 

 though the heavens had at last taken pity on 

 the scorched earth, and the more restful shades 

 of late afternoon came to my little caravan like 

 a draught of crystal water to one lost in a desert. 

 We had reached a native village, a cluster of 

 reed-thatched huts inhabited by a few score 

 of Awisa. Away to the north a great tower- 

 ing wall of blue frowned down on the little 

 settlement — the south-eastern pinnacles of the 

 Muchinga Mountains. 



I had pitched my wandering camp and lay 

 back in the comfortable canvas of a deck chair, 

 with my face to the rugged grandeur of the 

 escarpment. A hundred paces away the rippling 

 rhapsody of the Nyamadzi river, released from 

 the rugged portals of its mountain home, fell 

 as a murmur on the evening air. Presently 

 the dying sun sank like a globe of furnace fire 

 on the mountain tops, and hurled red shafts of 

 departing glory across the western sky. The 

 grim old buttresses of the mountains had wit- 

 nessed such a scene since the beginning of things. 



