BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
i o 
the more level surface of the upraised tableland, it is a veritable “Jack-in-the 
Beanstalk’s” country, quite different in aspect to the tropical plains below. 
Turning your eyes away, however, from the blue gulf which yawns beneath the 
precipitous ascent of several thousand feet—which blue gulf after analysis by 
the eye resolves itself into the faint map of many leagues of surrounding 
countries—you find that the plateau on which you stand is a little world in 
itself. The general surface is rolling grass land and beautifully-shaped downs, 
with little streams and little lakes, and little forests ; and again from out of this 
tableland little mountains of one to three thousand feet, chiefly of granite, rise 
up into the clouds and in their austere rockiness contrast charmingly with the 
lawns of short grass, the flowery vales, and the rich woodlands at their base. 
Altogether the scenery is pretty rather than grand, and if you could forget the 
ascent you have made and your geographical position, you might imagine 
“JACK-IN-THE-BEANSTALK’S ” COUNTRY 
yourself in Wales, and believe that country of this sort stretched inimitably 
before you for miles and miles, were it not that upon walking a few steps 
in another direction you suddenly stop shuddering on the sharp edge of an 
awful gulf—a gulf which on a misty day might be the end and edge of the 
world. 
It is a “ Jack-in-the-Beanstalk ” country. A little section of land upraised 
and quite apart from the rest of Tropical Africa with a climate and flora of its 
own, and as a rule without indigenous human inhabitants. The fauna of these 
altitudes has usually peculiar features though most of the mammals differ but 
little from those of the plains. Antelopes, buffalos, and even elephants will 
scramble to these heights, if they be in any way accessible, for the sake of the 
sweet herbage ; therefore in your ramblings over these plateaux you may catch 
sight of big game, and even meet in its train the lion and leopard. The woods 
of Cape-oak and other evergreens—the branches of which are hung with long 
sprays of greenish-white lichen, “the old man’s beard” 1 —are resonant with the 
1 Usnea, the “orchilla” weed of commerce. 
