some distance
in all directions. We climbed steadily for a couple of thousand feet,
always in forest so wild and grand and beautiful as to exceed all dreams
of what an African forest could be. It more than fulfilled the
preconceptions of a tropical forest such as you see described in stories
of the Congo and the Amazon.

The air was cold in the shadows, but pleasant in the little open glades
that occasionally spread out before us. Once or twice in the heart of
that overwhelming forest we found little circular clearings so devoid of
trees as to seem like artificial clearings. Once we found the skull of
an elephant and scores of times we narrowly escaped the deep elephant
traps that lay in our paths. Many times we saw evidences of the giant
forest pig that lives on Mount Kenia and has only once or twice been
killed by a white man. Sometimes we came to deep ravines with sides that
led for a hundred feet almost perpendicularly through tangles of
creepers and bogs of rotted vegetation.

We dragged ourselves up by clinging to vines and monkey ropes. On all
sides was a solitude so vast as almost to overpower the senses. The
sounds of bird life seemed only to intensify the effect of solitude.
Once in a while we came upon evidences of human habitation, little huts
of twigs and leaves, where the Wanderobo, or man of the forest, lived
and hunted. Up in some of the trees were thin cylindrical wooden honey
pots, some of them ages old and some comparatively new. And in the lower
levels of the forest we saw where the Kikuyu women had come up for
firewood. For some strange reason the elephants are not afraid of the
native women and will not be disturbed by the sight of one of them.
After seeing the women I am not surprised that they feel that way about
it, but I don't see how they can tell the women from the men. Possibly
because they know that only the women do such manual labor as to carry
wood.

In the afternoon we reached the bamboos which lie above the forest belt.
Here the ground is clean and heavily carpeted with dry bamboo leaves.
The bamboos grow close together, all seemingly of the same size, and are
pervaded with a cool, greenish shadow that is almost sunny in comparison
with the deep, solemn shades of the great forest.

Then we struck a trail. The old Wanderobo guide said it was only an hour
or so old and that we should soon overtake the elephant. It was
evidently only one elephant and not a large one. It is fascinating