you limp back through the stubbly grass to find the track once more, of course tripping up a dozen times over unseen stumps and stones, and finally reaching the road to see your caravan represented by a few white specks in the extreme distance, these white specks now hurrying on with aggravated speed, just as if they knew you were limping painfully after them, and wished to pay you out for the many times when, they being tired and halting, you, burdenless and fresh, had remorselessly driven them on. And so with many sensible reasons you vow that nothing shall tempt you from the road again, for, even supposing you killed anything, can you stop the caravan for many hours while the meat is cooked and the skin cured? Of course not, why-and here you interrupt these reflections by exclaiming excitedly to your servant, "Oh, look here; I can't stand this. Give me my gun-sh! don't you see that sable antelope-there! standing under the shade of the big tree;" and so hurriedly taking aim you fire, and oh! joy, the antelope falls, evidently wounded, but, alas! not to the death, for it is up and off again before your next shot can finish the work, and like an idiot, you forget your sore feet and fatigue, and go racing after it over stocks and stones till once more you find it is in vain.

Fig. 21.

Sable Antelope.

to combine the cares of a marching caravan and the pleasures of the chase.

The expedition had been toiling on across the hot

plains of Lanjora through the sultry afternoon, and now towards evening stopped to lay down its many burdens amid the dusty tufts of scorched grass round the base of a great mimosa-tree. Only one hour might we rest, for water lay two days behind us and one long day's journey in front, and we intended but to stretch our tired legs on the lumpy soil until the obscurity prevailing after sunset was dispelled by the uprising of the full moon. Then beneath her cooler rays we should journey on towards our goal for half the night, and so be spared a longer walk through the heat of the morrow's sun. The day had been sultry, and, though the rainy season was over, the western sky was a mass of lurid clouds, which in one part of the horizon were particularly dark and concentrated. I knew what caused this, and what object these cloudmasses were jealously concealing like the courtiers and officials who surround the person of some Eastern emperor; and I, who had journeyed many weary miles to see the greatest snow-capped mountain of Central Africa, impatiently longed for some giant broom to clear the sky of those heavy mists and vapours which now hid him from my gaze.

Slowly a globe of yellow-white rose in the east and mounted into the clouds, from whence a softened light descended, and showed the track across the plain winding away like a crooked snake towards the west. With many an impatient sigh and grunt the weary men took up their burdens, and I, no less tired, but compelled to show my porters an encouraging example, staggered on to my blistered feet and limped along in front of the caravan, which, once more on the move, jogged on with little heart till midnight. Then we could no more; so, making fires to keep off the wild

beasts, we stopped to rest till dawn. With the falling temperature of the small hours, a brisk wind arose from the heated plain and swept the clouds from off the sky, all except the mass that obstinately clung to Kilima-njaro. Feverish and over-tired, I could not sleep, and sat and watched the heavens, waiting for the dawn. A hundred men were snoring around me, and the night was anything but silent, for the hyenas were laughing hideously in the gloom outside our circle of expiring embers. At five o'clock I woke my servant Virapan, and whilst he was making my morning coffee I dropped into a doze, from which, at dawn, he roused me, and pointed to the horizon, where, in the north-west, a strange sight was to be seen. "Laputa!" I exclaimed; and as Virapan, though he had read "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Arabian Nights" in his native tongue, had never heard of "Gulliver's Travels," I proceeded to enlighten him as to the famous suspended island of Swift's imagining, and explained my exclamation by pointing to the now visible Kilima-njaro, which, with its two peaks of Kibó and Kimawenzi and the parent mass of mountain, rose high above a level line of cloud, and thus, completely severed in appearance from the earth beneath, resembled so strangely the magnetic island of Laputa.

Kilima-njaro was weird in the early flush of dawn, with its snowy crater faintly pink against a sky of deep blue-grey, wherein the pale and faded moon was sinking, and the stars were just discernible; but as the stronger light of perfect day prevailed, and the clouds which concealed the base of the mountain disappeared, its appearance was disappointing. Owing to an atmospheric illusion Kilima-njaro, which was in