4 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
We are going to climb a mountain. First there are the low foothills to 
surmount. The soil is red and hard ; the grass is scattered and in yellow wisps, 
and the many wild flowers are drooping, for it is the end of the dry season. 
The trees are in foliage, though the rains have not yet fallen, and the young 
leaves at this stage are seldom green, but the most beautiful shades of carmine 
pink, of pinkish yellow, of greenish mauve, and even inky purple. Here and 
there sprays of foliage are in a more advanced development, and are green with 
a bluish bloom, or of the brightest emerald. But the height of the trees is not 
great, and their leaves, though large, are scattered in a tufty growth that yields 
but a feeble patchwork of shade from the hot sun ; the branches are coarse, 
and thick, and seldom straight, they look just like the branches of trees drawn 
from imagination by amateur water-colour artists. In many cases the bark 
is still black and sooty with the scorching of the recent bush fires. The general 
impression of all this vegetation, though one is forced to admire the individual 
tints of the newly-opened leaves, is disappointing. It is scrubby. The land¬ 
scape has not the dignity of a blasted heath, or the simplicity of a sandy 
desert; its succession of undulations of low scattered forest of such a harlequin 
variation of tints is such as to produce no general effect of definite form and 
settled colour on the eye. But this is a good game country. As you plod 
along the hard red path, baked almost into brick by the blazing sun acting on 
the red mud of the rainy season, you will suddenly catch sight of a splendid 
sable antelope with ringed horns, almost in a half oval, a black and white face, 
a glossy black body, white stomach, fringed and tufted tail, and heavy black 
mane; or, it may be, his beautiful female of almost equal bulk, but with 
smaller horns, and with all the markings and coloration chestnut and white 
instead of white and black. Unless you are very quick with your rifle, the 
beast will soon be hid and almost undiscoverable amongst the low trees and 
bushes. 
The path is broken here and there by seams of granite. Every now and 
then there is a regular scramble over wayworn rocks; granite boulders are more 
and more interspersed amongst the red clay. Between the boulders grow 
aloes with fleshy leaves of green, spotted with red, and long flower spikes 
of crimson which end in coral-coloured flower buds—buds which open 
grudgingly at the tip; the edges of the sprawling aloe leaves are dentelated, 
and in their tendency to redness sometimes all green is merged in a deep 
vinous tint. 
Now there is less scrub, and the trees as we ascend become larger and more 
inclined to stand in clumps; their foliage is thicker. We are approaching a 
stream, and its course is marked by a forest of a different type, fig trees of 
various species, tall parinariums (a tree which bears a purple plum), huge¬ 
leaved gomphias, and velvet-foliaged albizzias. On either side of the stream, 
also, there is a jungle of bamboos, and the path descends from out of the weary 
glare of the white sunlight on the red clay into a cool, moist, green tunnel 
through the numberless spear-heads of bamboo leaves. There are many ferns 
on either side of the stream bank and beautiful carmine lilies 1 are growing 
by the water’s edge, but as the rains are still withheld there is but a thin film of 
water slipping down over the grey rocks and brown pebbles, and the stream 
may be easily crossed from stepping stone to stepping stone. Then a clamber 
up the opposite bank and through the bamboo out once more into the scorching 
sunshine, and so on and on along a winding path through a native village 
1 See illustration, page 211. 
