cHo x] THE GREAT FOREST 245 
of bird or animal life. A troop of long-haired black and 
white monkeys bounded away among the tree-tops. 
Here and there brilliant flowers lightened the gloom. 
We ducked under vines and climbed over fallen timber. 
Poisonous nettles stung our hands. We were drenched 
by the wet boughs which we brushed aside. Mosses 
and ferns grew rank and close. The trees were of 
strange kinds. There were huge trees with little leaves, 
and small trees with big leaves. There were trees with 
bare, fleshy limbs, that writhed out through the 
neighbouring branches, bearing sparse clusters of large 
frondage. In places the forest was low, the trees thirty 
or forty feet high, the bushes that choked the ground 
between, fifteen or twenty feet high. In other places 
mighty monarchs of the wood, straight and tall, towered 
aloft to an immense height; among them were trees 
whose smooth, round boles were spotted like sycamores, 
while far above our heads their gracefully spreading 
branches were hung with vines like mistletoe and 
draped with Spanish moss ; trees whose surfaces were 
corrugated and knotted as if they were made of bundles 
of great creepers; and giants whose buttressed trunks 
were four times a man’s length across. 
Twice we got on elephant spoor, once of a single 
bull, once of a party of three. Then Cuninghame and 
the ’Ndorobo redoubled their caution. They would 
minutely examine the fresh dung ; and above all they 
continually tested the wind, scanning the tree-tops, and 
lighting matches to see from the smoke what the eddies 
were near the ground. Each time, after an hour’s 
stealthy stepping and crawling along the twisted trail a 
slight shift of the wind in the almost still air gave our 
scent to the game, and away it went before we could 
catch a glimpse of it ; and we resumed our walk. The 
