THROUGH THE FORESTS OF KIMAWFNZI , #c. 285 
cry. Unseen birds sounded their sonorous notes like 
a tolling bell. Ear-piercing shrieks came from some 
hunted monkey, pursued, maybe, by a leopard. 
Elephants sent their discordant nasal trumpeting 
vibrating harshly through the glades. Each porter, 
as he clutched his load with one hand and with the 
other pushed aside the interwoven boughs, turned his 
head uneasily from side to side, dreading the sudden 
rising from the bush of some terrible unimagined foe. 
Strangers to this tremulous suspense, the Maranu 
guides hacked away a bush here, pushed aside a 
branch there, leapt over fallen tree-trunks, slid down 
glissades of sodden earth, glided through thorny 
groves, and paying no heed to our sighs and groans, 
our pleadings for repose, our cruel stumbles and head¬ 
long falls, passed imperturbably through the trackless 
woods, and cared seemingly little whether we followed 
them or not. Nevertheless at whatever cost we kept 
them in sight, and at length to our universal relief 
quitted this gloomy region of dense, dank forest at 
about half-past five in the afternoon, and emerged 
quite suddenly and unexpectedly upon a beautiful park¬ 
like country of grassy hillocks, undulating plains, 
running streams, ferny hollows, and tidy copses. 
Hereabouts we camped out, and I, ravished with the 
beauty of the scenery and with the magnificence of 
the view (for I was still at an altitude of 8500 feet, and 
could see far and wide round the mountain), set myself 
to work to create in imagination a fair city of civiliza¬ 
tion whibh should rise on these grassy slopes and 
dominate the cultivable lands below. Here, on these 
two hillocks, I would build my twin forts, and here 
should be my terraced vineyards, there cornfields and 
gardens, and there a handsome stone house, my pre- 
