232 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
mud. Our last camp, at an altitude of about ten thousand 
feet, was so cold that the water froze in the basins, and 
the shivering porters slept in numbed discomfort. There 
was constant fog and rain, and on the highest plateau the 
bleak landscape, shrouded in driving mist, was northern to 
all the senses. The ground was rolling, and through the 
deep valleys ran brawling brooks of clear water; one little 
foaming stream, suddenly tearing down a hill-side, might 
have been that which Childe Roland crossed before he 
came to the dark tower. 
There was not much game, and it generally moved abroad 
by night. One frosty evening we killed a duiker by shin¬ 
ing its eyes. We saw old elephant tracks. The high, wet 
levels swarmed with mice and shrews, just as our arctic 
and alpine meadows swarm with them. The species were 
really widely different from ours, but many of them showed 
curious analogies in form and habits; there was a short¬ 
tailed shrew much like our mole shrew, and a long-haired, 
short-tailed rat like a very big meadow mouse. They were 
so plentiful that we frequently saw them, and the grass 
was cut up by their runways. They were abroad during 
the day, probably finding the nights too cold, and in an 
hour Heller trapped a dozen or two individuals belonging 
to seven species and five different genera. There were 
not many birds so high up. There were deer ferns; and 
Spanish moss hung from the trees and even from the bam¬ 
boos. The flowers included utterly strange forms, as for 
instance giant lobelias ten feet high. Others we know 
in our gardens; geraniums and red-hot-pokers, which in 
places turned the glades to a fire color. Yet others either 
were like, or looked like, our own wild flowers: orange 
