d on his
head. At the same moment the syces led up our horses, mounted and headed
across the little plain whence had come the four ostriches. Our African
journey had definitely begun.

Behind us, all abreast marched the four gunbearers; then the four syces;
then the safari single file, an askari at the head bearing proudly his
ancient musket and our banner, other askaris flanking, M'ganga bringing
up the rear with his mighty umbrella and an unsuspected rhinoceros-hide
whip. The tent boys and the cook scattered along the flank anywhere, as
befitted the free and independent who had nothing to do with the serious
business of marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating
of loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from the
ranks and died down again as one or another individual or group felt
moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response. Their leader, in
a high falsetto, said something like,

"Kuna koma kuno,"

and all his tribesmen would follow with a single word in a deep gruff
tone,

"Za-la-nee!"

All of which undoubtedly helped immensely.

The country was a bully country, but somehow it did not look like
Africa. That is to say, it looked altogether too much like any amount
of country at home. There was nothing strange and exotic about it. We
crossed a little plain, and up over a small hill, down into a shallow
canyon that seemed to be wooded with live oaks, across a grass valley
or so, and around a grass hill. Then we went into camp at the edge of
another grass valley, by a stream across which rose some ordinary low
cliffs.

That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this country-it
is so much like home. Of course, there are many wide districts exotic
enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the rivers, the bamboo
forests, the great tangled forests themselves, the banana groves down
the aisles of which dance savages with shields-but so very much of it is
familiar. One needs only church spires and a red-roofed village or so
to imagine one's self in Surrey. There is any amount of country
like Arizona, and more like the uplands of Wyoming, and a lot of it
resembling the smaller landscapes of New England. The prospects of the
whole world are there, so that somewhere every wanderer can find the
countryside of his own home repeated. And, by the same token, that is
exactly what makes a good deal of it so startling. When a man sees a
file of spear-armed savages, or a