600 OMNIPRESENT LOVE. 



fifty or sixty miles north across a succession of forests. In many 

 places the forests had been cleared away and gigantic grasses 

 had usurped the clearances ; as they advanced large trees were 

 now and then passed, in whose branches many parrots had made 

 their nests, and sometimes far away from the ground they saw 

 huts of men lodged on the huge limbs of these lonely sentinels 

 like watch-towers, or places of refuge for their builders from the 

 wrath of their enemies. The villagers they met were civil, 

 but rushed about them like noisy children, and many of Mo- 

 hamad's followers, unused to the ways of such wild men, were 

 terrified, and expected every moment to be killed and eaten. 

 The people were generally models of symmetry, and their art 

 had done but little to conceal their fine proportions beside their 

 necklaces and copper rings on wrists and ankles. Their skill 

 was confined to the arrangement of the hair, which the women 

 seemed to have special pleasure in weaving into basket-form 

 behind. The men, though masters with the spear and the bow, 

 had resorted, like many other tribes, to traps for the common- 

 place work of securing game. Huge elephant traps were seen 

 in many places, not unlike those described as in use in the south. 



The country was teeming with people and multitudes of 

 hidden villages, which were approached along the beds of rivulets 

 that no foot-mark might betray them to an enemy. No higher 

 law than force had been dreamed of; the idea of confederation 

 had never penetrated their gloom ; as many independent states 

 as there were villages crowded that small area, and blood that 

 cried for vengeance seemed to divide and isolate them all. The 

 men were always around, and rushed about them continually, 

 bearing heavy wooden shields. But tenderer passions existed 

 too; children played as innocently as anywhere, and love, omni- 

 present love, for God is love, shed a light which, though it could 

 not overpower the darkness of the deep depravity, did soften the 

 gloom a little. In one place they saw a newly-married couple 

 standing by the way, their arms around each other lovingly, and 

 nobody mocked them for their love as more enlightened people 

 might have done. 



The marching was very difficult ; the tall grass and dense 

 vegetation, even when the rains suspended, in turn impeded 

 their progress and drenched them with their dripping leaves. 



