HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 37 



"Here lies Cecil Rhodes." The simplest possible thing and 

 yet most impressive. You see many more of these granite 

 hills but you don't see anything more suggesting life. How- 

 ever, there is something suggestive and impressive in the fact 

 of that great man lying there. He went out and made peace 

 with the Kaffirs, took his life in his hands in order to bring 

 the Kaffirs to peace. It is quite suitable that he should be 

 entombed there in the far wilderness. 



Leaving here, we went still further north on our way to 

 Victoria Falls. This rather curious thing is an ant-hill, an 

 ant-hill that is ten feet high. The white ants make these 

 hills. A tree makes a very good start for the hill and gener- 

 ation after generation live there until it gets to be quite a 

 little mound. In the flatter parts of the desert this is one of 

 the places you can get a view. The natives do not build 

 much more elaborate houses than the ants. The natives, as 

 you go further north, are very scantily clad. Things grow 

 more primitive as you go towards the great central forests of 

 Africa. 



This represents some of the best forest we saw on our 

 way to Victoria Falls. When you cut one of these trees, you 

 find that the wood is red. We were there in the summer 

 and half the leaves were fallen. That was the dry part of 

 the year, and most of the leaves are gone in .the dry season. 

 Autumn and spring come very close together there. A little 

 later and there would have been the fresh green of spring. 

 At that particular time of year you had almost the feeling of 

 here in Canada except that the heat was great. The Baobabs, 

 perhaps, are the biggest trees in Africa. They are bottle- 

 shaped. They are thick and massive at the foot. No trees 

 in the world surpass these in girth. There are trees in Canada 

 taller, but I doubt whether they have a wider girth than one 

 of these. You notice that it is leafless. That time of year 

 was the time when they were taking their rest. A few weeks 

 later everything was fresh and green. 



The first day we were at Victoria Falls, we made an 

 excursion around the river, and one of the things I did was to 



