uil dome of sky.

It was song materialized in colour and form, the song of the primeval
forests breaking from the mists of chaos, tremendous, triumphant, joyous,
finding day at last, and greeting him with the glory of the palms, with
the rustle of the n'sambyas tossing their golden bugles to the light, the
drip and sigh of the euphorbia trees, the broad-leaved plantains and the
thousand others whose forms hold the gloom of the forest in the mesh of
their leaves.

"I have awakened, O God! I have awakened. Behold me, O Lord! I am Thine!"

Thus to the splendour of the sun and led by the trumpet of the wind sang
the forest. A hundred million trees lent their voices to the song. A
hundred million trees--acacia and palm, m'bina and cottonwood, thorn and
mimosa; in gloom, in shine, in valley and on rise, mist-strewn and
sun-stricken, all bending under the deep sweet billows of the wind.

At the edge of the forest Berselius and Adams took leave of Meeus. Neither
Berselius nor Meeus showed any sign of the past day. They had "slept it
off." As for Adams, he knew nothing, except that the villagers had been
punished and their houses destroyed.

The way lay due south. They were now treading that isthmus of woods which
connects the two great forests which, united thus, make the forest of
M'Bonga. The trees in this vast connecting wood are different from the
trees in the main forests. You find here enormous acacias, monkey-bread
trees, raphia palms and baobabs; less gloom, and fewer creeping and
hanging plants.

Berselius, as a rule, brought with him a taxidermist, but this expedition
was purely for sport. The tusks of whatever elephants were slain would be
brought back, but no skins; unless, indeed, they were fortunate enough to
find some rare or unknown species.

CHAPTER XVII

SUN-WASHED SPACES

A two days' march brought them clear of the woods and into a broken
country, vast, sunstrewn and silent; a beautiful desolation where the tall
grass waved in the wind, and ridge and hollow, plain and mimosa tree, led
the eye beyond, and beyond, to everlasting space.

Standing here alone, and listening, the only sound from all that great
sunlit country was the sound of the wind in the grasses near by.

Truly this place was at the very back of the world, the hinterland of the
primeval forests. Strike eastward far enough and you would sight the
snow-capped crest of Kilimanjaro, King of African mountains, sitting
snow-crowne