The Land of Footprints | Page 8

valleys
between. Near at hand, in the middle distance, far away, these fleets of
the plain sailed, until at last hull-down over the horizon their topmasts
disappeared. Above them sailed too the phantom fleet of the clouds,
shot with light, shining like silver, airy as racing yachts, yet casting
here and there exaggerated shadows below.
The sky in Africa is always very wide, greater than any other skies.
Between horizon and horizon is more space than any other world
contains. It is as though the cup of heaven had been pressed a little
flatter; so that while the boundaries have widened, the zenith, with its
flaming sun, has come nearer. And yet that is not a constant quantity
either. I have seen one edge of the sky raised straight up a few million
miles, as though some one had stuck poles under its corners, so that the
western heaven did not curve cup-wise over to the horizon at all as it
did everywhere else, but rather formed the proscenium of a gigantic
stage. On this stage they had piled great heaps of saffron yellow clouds,
and struck shafts of yellow light, and filled the spaces with the lurid
portent of a storm-while the twenty thousand foot mountains below,
crouched whipped and insignificant to the earth.

We sat atop our butte for an hour while H. looked through his 'scope.
After the soft silent immensity of the earth, running away to infinity,
with its low waves, and its scattered fleet of hills, it was with difficulty
that we brought our gaze back to details and to things near at hand.
Directly below us we could make out many different-hued specks.
Looking closely, we could see that those specks were game animals.
They fed here and there in bands of from ten to two hundred, with
valleys and hills between. Within the radius of the eye they moved,
nowhere crowded in big herds, but everywhere present. A band of
zebras grazed the side of one of the earth waves, a group of gazelles
walked on the skyline, a herd of kongoni rested in the hollow between.
On the next rise was a similar grouping; across the valley a new
variation. As far as the eye could strain its powers it could make out
more and ever more beasts. I took up my field glasses, and brought
them all to within a sixth of the distance. After amusing myself for
some time in watching them, I swept the glasses farther on. Still the
same animals grazing on the hills and in the hollows. I continued to
look, and to look again, until even the powerful prismatic glasses failed
to show things big enough to distinguish. At the limit of extreme vision
I could still make out game, and yet more game. And as I took my
glasses from my eyes, and realized how small a portion of this great
land-sea I had been able to examine; as I looked away to the ship-hills
hull-down over the horizon, and realized that over all that extent fed the
Game; the ever-new wonder of Africa for the hundredth time filled my
mind-the teeming fecundity of her bosom.
"Look here," said H. without removing his eye from the 'scope, "just
beyond the edge of that shadow to the left of the bushes in the
donga-I've been watching them ten minutes, and I can't make 'em out
yet. They're either hyenas acting mighty queer, or else two lionesses."
We snatched our glasses and concentrated on that important detail.
To catch the third experience you must have journeyed with us across
the "Thirst," as the natives picturesquely name the waterless tract of
two days and a half. Our very start had been delayed by a breakage of
some Dutch-sounding essential to our ox wagon, caused by the
confusion of a night attack by lions: almost every night we had lain
awake as long as we could to enjoy the deep-breathed grumbling or the
vibrating roars of these beasts. Now at last, having pushed through the

dry country to the river in the great plain, we were able to take breath
from our mad hurry, and to give our attention to affairs beyond the
limits of mere expediency. One of these was getting Billy a shot at a
lion.
Billy had never before wanted to shoot anything except a python. Why
a python we could not quite fathom. Personally, I think she had some
vague idea of getting even for that Garden of Eden affair. But lately,
pythons proving scarcer than in that favoured locality, she had switched
to a lion. She wanted, she said, to give the skin to her sister. In vain we
pointed out that a zebra hide was very decorative, that lions go to
absurd lengths in retaining