12 BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
re-echoes worse than any roar of artillery in battle from every ravine and 
hill-side. The drenching rain or the driving mist may be chilling your 
half-naked followers into blue numbness, and even bringing them, if they are 
unsheltered, dangerously near death from cold. Even if it be a fine night, 
and the moon shining, there will be something a little repellent and awe- 
striking in the world outside your tent. The forest, to the vicinity of which 
you have come for shelter, is very black, and the strange cries of bird and 
beast coming from these depths quite confirm the native belief that the trees 
are haunted with the spirits of the departed. The stars seem so near to you. 
and if in the moonlight you have found your way over the tussocky grass 
to the edge of the plateau and looked forth on a sleeping universe you feel 
a little frightened—so completely are you aloof from the living world of 
man. It is much pleasanter, therefore, to be shut up in a good tent or log 
cabin, snugly ensconced in bed (for it is probably freezing hard) reading a novel. 
We are on the upper plateau of Mlanje, grandest of all British Central 
African mountains. It is early morning, say 6.30 a.m. We have been roused 
by our native attendants, have had a warm bath and a cup of coffee and are 
now inspecting our surroundings in the glory of the early sunshine. On the 
short wiry grass there lies a white rime of frost as we walk down the slope 
to the cedar woods. Here rises up before us a magnificent forest of straight 
and noble trees, of conifers 1 which in appearance resemble cedars of Lebanon 
1 IViddringtonia wkytei. 
THE MLANJE CEDAR FORESTS 
