drop this
great fierce country beyond a healing horizon out of sight. The
immensity of primal space was in it, and the simplicity of primal
things-rough, unfinished, full of mystery. There was no colour. The
scene 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