108 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



my stretcher bed. The mournful howl of the 

 hyaena wailed across the Nyamadzi like the 

 despairing cry of an earth-bound soul, and then 

 I fell asleep and climbed the paths to dream- 

 land. The Muchingas still frowned down on me, 

 and on the highest pinnacle I saw Twala the 

 one-eyed. He bore the tribal marks of the 

 Awemba. War was painted on him. In his 

 left hand he held a mighty, murderous spear and 

 I saw its broad blade quiver. He clenched both 

 hands above him, and I looked to see what it 

 was that he grasped so tightly in his right. 

 It was a Bible. 



Hurrah ! The crest of the Muchingas at last 

 was reached. Panting we sat down on the edge 

 of the escarpment and looked down on the heat 

 haze of the Luangwa, which wrapped forests and 

 " dambos " in a quivering sheen of mist. After 

 a short stay in M'Pika I journeyed eastwards to 

 a rugged and practically unknown country, one 

 of the vast tracts of Africa still in the Pleistocene 

 Age, where the shrill whistle of the locomotive 

 has never been heard, a region in the womb of 

 time. This is one of those lands which have 

 taken up a last stand for Nature, where yet no 

 tidings of the civilized Nativity have been borne. 

 Here is a monarchy of Solitude, a primeval prin- 

 cipality, of which the prince is Paganism and 

 his sceptre Savagery. Great rugged mountain 

 ranges] eer at the petty, struggling modernity which 

 you may see growing like a violet in a strangling 

 tangle of lianas on the Shire Highlands. Placid 

 pools and rippling rivers, plains and forests, 

 valleys and torrents proclaim their fealty to the 

 sway of World Dawn. It is in parts of this 



