388 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
After leaving the elephant camp we journeyed through 
country for the most part covered with an open forest 
growth. The trees were chiefly acacias. Among them 
were interspersed huge candelabra euphorbias, all in 
bloom, and now and then one of the brilliant red flowering 
trees, which never seem to carry many leaves at the same 
time with their gaudy blossoms. At one place for miles 
the open forest was composed of the pod-bearing, thick- 
leafed trees on which we had found the elephants feeding; 
their bark and manner of growth gave them somewhat 
the look of jack-oaks; where they made up the forest, 
growing well apart from one another, it reminded us of the 
cross-timbers of Texas and Oklahoma. The grass was 
everywhere three or four feet high; here and there were 
patches of the cane-like elephant grass, fifteen feet high. 
It was pleasant to stride along the road in the early 
mornings, followed by the safari, and we saw many a glo¬ 
rious sunrise. But as noon approached it grew very hot, 
under the glare of the brazen equatorial sun, and we were 
always glad when we approached our new camp, with its 
grass-strewn ground, its wickerwork fence, and cool, open 
rest house. The local sub-chief and his elders were usually 
drawn up to receive me at the gate, bowing, clapping their 
hands, and uttering their long-drawn e-h-h-s; and often 
banana saplings or branches would be stuck in the ground 
to form avenues of approach, and the fence and rest-house 
might be decorated with flowers of many kinds. Some¬ 
times we were met with music, on instruments of one 
string, of three strings, of ten strings—rudimentary fiddles 
and harps; and there was a much more complicated in¬ 
strument, big and cumbrous, made of bars of wood placed 
