The dark-curtained
forest seemed, fancifully, an enchantment through which we had gained to
this remote smiling land, nearest of all to the blue sky.
We continued south for two days; and then, as the narrative will show,
were forced to return. We found it always the same type; pleasant sleepy
little valleys winding around and between low hills crowned with soft
groves and forests. It was for all the world like northern Surrey, or
like some of the live oak country of California. Only this we soon
discovered: in spite of the enchantment of the magic-protecting forest,
the upper benches too were subject to the spell that lies over all
Africa. These apparently little valleys were in reality the matter of an
hour's journey to cross; these rounded hills, to all seeming only two
good golf strokes from bottom to top, were matters of serious climbing;
these compact, squared groves of oaklike trees were actually great
forests of giants in which one could lose one's self for days, in which
roamed herds of elephant and buffalo. It looked compact because we could
see all its constituent elements. As a matter of fact, it was neat and
tidy; only we were, as usual, too small for it.
At the end of two hours' fast marching we had made the distance, say,
from the clubhouse to the second hole. Then we camped in a genuinely
little grove of really small trees overlooking a green valley bordered
with wooded hills.
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