bench. I signalled the camp-in plain sight-to come and get the
head and meat, and sat down to wait. And while waiting, I looked
out on a scene that has since been to me one of my four
symbolizations of Africa.

The morning was dull, with gray clouds through which at wide
intervals streamed broad bands of misty light. Below me the cliff
fell away clear to a gorge in the depths of which flowed a river.
Then the land began to rise, broken, sharp, tumbled, terrible,
tier after tier, gorge after gorge, one twisted range after the
other, across a breathlessly immeasurable distance. The prospect
was full of shadows thrown by the tumult of lava. In those
shadows one imagined stranger abysses. Far down to the right a
long narrow lake inaugurated a flatter, alkali-whitened country
of low cliffs in long straight lines. Across the distances proper
to a dozen horizons the tumbled chaos heaved and fell. The eye
sought rest at the bounds usual to its accustomed world-and went
on. There was no roundness to the earth, no grateful curve to
drop this great fierce country beyond a healing horizon out of
sight. The immensity of primal space was in it, and the
simplicity of primal things-rough, unfinished, full of mystery.
There was no colour. The scene was done in slate gray, darkening
to the opaque where a tiny distant rain squall started;
lightening in the nearer shadows to reveal half-guessed peaks;
brightening unexpectedly into broad short bands of misty gray
light slanting from the gray heavens above to the sombre tortured
immensity beneath. It was such a thing as Gustave Dore might have
imaged to serve as an abiding place for the fierce chaotic spirit of
the African wilderness.