NERI 
229 
CH. X] 
basins, and the shivering porters slept in numbed dis¬ 
comfort. 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 hillside, 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 shining 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 bamboos. 
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 colour. Yet others 
either were like, or looked like, our own wild flowers: 
orange lady-slippers, red gladiolus on stalks six feet 
high, pansy-like violets, and blackberries and yellow 
raspberries. There were stretches of bushes bearing 
