The Land of Footprints | Page 7

was done in slate gray, darkening to the opaque where a tiny
distant rain squall started; lightening in the nearer shadows to reveal
half-guessed peaks; brightening unexpectedly into broad short bands of
misty gray light slanting from the gray heavens above to the sombre
tortured immensity beneath. It was such a thing as Gustave Dore might
have imaged to serve as an abiding place for the fierce chaotic spirit of
the African wilderness.
I sat there for some time hugging my knees, waiting for the men to
come. The tremendous landscape seemed to have been willed to
immobility. The rain squalls forty miles or more away did not appear to
shift their shadows; the rare slanting bands of light from the clouds
were as constant as though they were falling through cathedral
windows. But nearer at hand other things were forward. The birds,
thousands of them, were doing their best to cheer things up. The

roucoulements of doves rose from the bushes down the face of the
cliffs; the bell bird uttered his clear ringing note; the chime bird gave
his celebrated imitation of a really gentlemanly sixty-horse power
touring car hinting you out of the way with the mellowness of a chimed
horn; the bottle bird poured gallons of guggling essence of happiness
from his silver jug. From the direction of camp, evidently jumped by
the boys, a steinbuck loped gracefully, pausing every few minutes to
look back, his dainty legs tense, his sensitive ears pointed toward the
direction of disturbance.
And now, along the face of the cliff, I make out the flashing of much
movement, half glimpsed through the bushes. Soon a fine old-man
baboon, his tail arched after the dandified fashion of the baboon
aristocracy stepped out, looked around, and bounded forward. Other
old men followed him, and then the young men, and a miscellaneous
lot of half-grown youngsters. The ladies brought up the rear, with the
babies. These rode their mothers' backs, clinging desperately while they
leaped along, for all the world like the pathetic monkey "jockeys" one
sees strapped to the backs of big dogs in circuses. When they had
approached to within fifty yards, remarked "hullo!" to them. Instantly
they all stopped. Those in front stood up on their hind legs; those
behind clambered to points of vantage on rocks and the tops of small
bushes: They all took a good long look at me. Then they told me what
they thought about me personally, the fact of my being there, and the
rude way I had startled them. Their remarks were neither
complimentary nor refined. The old men, in especial, got quite profane,
and screamed excited billingsgate. Finally they all stopped at once,
dropped on all fours, and loped away, their ridiculous long tails curved
in a half arc. Then for the first time I noticed that, under cover of the
insults, the women and children had silently retired. Once more I was
left to the familiar gentle bird calls, and the vast silence of the
wilderness beyond.
The second picture, also, was a view from a height, but of a totally
different character. It was also, perhaps, more typical of a greater part
of East Equatorial Africa. Four of us were hunting lions with
natives-both wild and tame-and a scratch pack of dogs. More of that
later. We had rummaged around all the morning without any results;
and now at noon had climbed to the top of a butte to eat lunch and look

abroad.
Our butte ran up a gentle but accelerating slope to a peak of big
rounded rocks and slabs sticking out boldly from the soil of the hill. We
made ourselves comfortable each after his fashion. The gunbearers
leaned against rocks and rolled cigarettes. The savages squatted on their
heels, planting their spears ceremonially in front of them. One of my
friends lay on his back, resting a huge telescope over his crossed feet.
With this he purposed seeing any lion that moved within ten miles.
None of the rest of us could ever make out anything through the
fearsome weapon. Therefore, relieved from responsibility by the
presence of this Dreadnaught of a 'scope, we loafed and looked about
us. This is what we saw:
Mountains at our backs, of course-at some distance; then plains in long
low swells like the easy rise and fall of a tropical sea, wave after wave,
and over the edge of the world beyond a distant horizon. Here and there
on this plain, single hills lay becalmed, like ships at sea; some peaked,
some cliffed like buttes, some long and low like the hulls of battleships.
The brown plain flowed up to wash their bases, liquid as the sea itself,
its tides rising in the coves of the hills, and ebbing in the