8 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
birds (not unmelodious) echo and re-echo through the forest glades as they 
call to one another; and here is a crimson flash, and there is a long crimson 
streak drawn across the green background as they fly backwards and forwards 
before the delighted intruder. 
Runnels of water will at times trickle through the black leaf mould of the 
scarcely discernible path, and you will come to many a fairy glen where the 
dark, clear, cold water lies in deep pools amongst the ferns. 
“the genius of the woods” (green turaco) 
The forest for a time will give place to a bamboo thicket, the bamboos 
perhaps of a different species to those lower down, with smaller and finer leaves 
of a deeper green ; nothing more beautiful than these bamboo glades is to 
be seen in the way of vegetation. It is difficult to express in words the 
effect which is produced by thousands of narrow, pointed leaves of shiny surface 
shaped like small spear blades—a wall of green facets—moving at times with 
a faint tremor which sends a shimmering of green around you, accompanied by 
the tiniest whispering sound. No transformation scene ever shown on the stage 
was so beautiful as a bamboo glade on the high mountain side with, invariably, 
water falling down the centre of the picture in tiny cascades and the soft ground 
carpeted with a deposit of cast leaves like thin spear blades of pale gold. 
