178 
IN AFRICA 
African forest could be. It more than fulfilled 
the preconceptions of a tropical forest such as you 
see described in stories of the Congo and the Ama¬ 
zon. 
The air was cold in the shadows, but pleasant in 
the little open glades that occasionally spread out 
before us. Once or twice in the heart of that over¬ 
whelming forest we found little circular clearings 
so devoid of trees as to seem like artificial clearings. 
Once we found the skull of an elephant and scores 
of times we narrowly escaped the deep elephant 
traps that lay in our paths. Many times we saw 
evidences of the giant forest pig that lives on 
Mount Kenia and has only once or twice been killed 
by a white man. Sometimes we came to deep ravines 
with sides that led for a hundred feet almost per¬ 
pendicularly through tangles of creepers and bogs 
of rotted vegetation. 
We dragged ourselves up by clinging to vines 
and monkey ropes. On all sides was a solitude so 
vast as almost to overpower the senses. The sounds 
of bird life seemed only to intensify the effect of 
solitude. Once in a while we came upon evidences 
of human habitation, little huts of twigs and leaves, 
where the Wanderobo, or man of the forest, lived 
and hunted. Up in some of the trees were thin 
cylindrical wooden honey pots, some of them ages 
old and some comparatively new. And in the lower 
levels of the forest we saw where the Kikuyu 
women had come up for firewood. For some 
strange reason the elephants are not afraid of the 
