One of them we passed through I am sure would have run
any Indian banyan hard for extent of ground covered, if it were
measured. In the region where these trees are frequent, the
undergrowth is less dense than it is lower down.
Imagine a vast, seemingly limitless cathedral with its countless
columns covered, nay, composed of the most exquisite dark-green,
large-fronded moss, with here and there a delicate fern embedded in
it as an extra decoration. The white, gauze-like mist comes down
from the upper mountain towards us: creeping, twining round, and
streaming through the moss-covered tree columns - long bands of it
reaching along sinuous, but evenly, for fifty and sixty feet or
more, and then ending in a puff like the smoke of a gun. Soon,
however, all the mist-streams coalesce and make the atmosphere all
their own, wrapping us round in a clammy, chill embrace; it is not
that wool-blanket, smothering affair that we were wrapped in down by
Buana, but exquisitely delicate. The difference it makes to the
beauty of the forest is just the same difference you would get if
you put a delicate veil over a pretty woman's face or a sack over
her head. In fact, the mist here was exceedingly becoming to the
forest's beauty. Now and again growls of thunder roll out from, and
quiver in the earth beneath our feet. Mungo is making a big
tornado, and is stirring and simmering it softly so as to make it
strong. I only hope he will not overdo it, as he does six times in
seven, and make it too heavy to get out on to the Atlantic, where
all tornadoes ought to go. If he does the thing will go and burst
on us in this forest to-night.
The forest now grows less luxuriant though still close - we have left
the begonias and the tree-ferns, and are in another zone. The trees
now, instead of being clothed in rich, dark-green moss, are heavily
festooned with long, greenish-white lichen. It pours with rain.
At last we reach the place where the sergeant says we ought to camp
for the night. I have been feeling the time for camping was very
ripe for the past hour, and Kefalla openly said as much an hour and
a half ago, but he got such scathing things said to him about
civilians' legs by the sergeant that I did not air my own opinion.
We are now right at the very edge of the timber belt. My head man
and three boys are done to a turn. If I had had a bull behind me or
Mr. Fildes in front, I might have done another five or seven miles,
but not more.
