141 
CH. Yi] AT MR. HEATLEY’S HOUSE 
and excitement over breaking camp after a few days’ 
rest as over reaching camp after a fifteen-mile march. 
On this occasion, after they had made up their loads, 
they danced in a ring for half an hour, two tin cans 
being beaten as tomtoms. Then off they strode in 
a long line with their burdens, following one another in 
Indian file, each greeting me with a smile and a deep 
“ Yambo, Bwana !” as he passed. I had grown attached 
to them, and of course especially to my tent-boys, gun- 
bearers, and saises, who quite touched me by their 
evident pleasure in coming to see me and greet me 
if I happened to be away from them for two or three 
days. 
Kermit and I rode off with Heatley to pass the night 
at his house. This was at the other end of his farm, in 
a totally different kind of country—a country of wooded 
hills, with glades and dells and long green grass in the 
valleys. It did not in the least resemble what one 
would naturally expect in Equatorial Africa. On the 
contrary, it reminded me of the beautiful rolling wooded 
country of Middle Wisconsin. But of course every¬ 
thing was really different. There were monkeys and 
leopards in the forests, and we saw whydah birds of a 
new kind, with red on the head and throat, and 
brilliantly coloured woodpeckers, and black-and-gold 
weaver-birds. Indeed, the wealth of bird-life was such 
that it cannot be described. Here, too, there were 
many birds with musical voices, to which we listened 
in the early morning. The best timber was yielded by 
the tall mahogo-tree, a kind of sandalwood. This was 
the tree selected by the wild-fig for its deadly embrace. 
The wild-fig begins as a huge parasitic vine, and ends 
as one of the largest and most stately, and also one of 
the greenest and most shady, trees in this part of Africa. 
