Untrodden Paths 
25 
tabulate it. Wintgens and I, on the other hand, made a little 
dash forward into the unexplored region to the eastward in the 
direction of the Kagera, accompanied by very few carriers and 
with provisions for one day. It is not possible with the pen 
adequately to describe the wonderful sensation of joy and victory 
that stirs the soul of the explorer as he roves along virgin tracks 
never trodden before by European foot. Involuntarily his 
thoughts fly wandering back, with a feeling of admiration, to 
those early pioneers of European civilisation, who with undaunted 
bravery and without those comforts which nowadays tend to 
alleviate the hardships of travel, spent years in exploring the 
dark paths of strange countries and facing unknown perils. A 
glow of reflected splendour seemed to illuminate our path. 
It was dark when we left the camp, but before very long the 
light of day appeared in the east. The steppe, sparsely covered 
with acacia shrub, spread out before us in hilly chains. From 
summit to summit we progressed, scouring all the country around 
and below us with our glasses. Solitude encircled us. To the 
east the bush dwindled away to treeless buga* on which roamed 
numberless herds of every kind of game. In the light of the 
dawn the striped skin of the zebra and the bulky yellow body of 
the eland rose up in striking contrast to the dark waste spaces. 
We saw various kinds of bustard, and ever and anon some great 
denizen of the air would soar heavenward in majestic flight. 
From a mountain top we finally espied a stream rushing 
along the yellow steppe in its sap-green, red grass setting, and 
discovered it to be the small river known as the Kalangassa by 
the natives, which drains into the Kagera and discharges south 
of Kanjonsa. Its banks were crowded with tremendous herds of 
game—zebras intermingled with lyre-antelopes, reed-buck and 
duykerbok of every kind. I thought I would take a snapshot of 
the zebras, and galloped after a troop, already in flight, leaving 
my boy a long way behind with my rifle. Suddenly I heard 
successive shots fired behind me in the distance. As I had an 
understanding with Wintgens that no ordinary game but buffaloes 
* Buga, open steppe. 
E 
