These campaigning experiences were unique. Probably never before in the
history of the world had such things been seen: the stillness, the
brooding silence of the vast primeval forest where no, or few, white men
have ever been before, and the only path is the track of the elephant;
the silence of the forest, stretching for hundreds of miles in all
directions, broken by the tramp of tens of thousands of armed men,
followed by the guns and heavy transport of a modern army, with its
hundreds of motor-lorries, its miles of wagons, its vast concourse of
black porters; while overhead the aëroplane, or, as the natives call it,
the "bird," more dreaded and more feared than even the crocodile in the
river, passes on swiftly with its bombs for the foe retreating ahead.
And what an effect this movement, continued for many months over many
thousands of miles, produced on the minds of the native population,
looking on in speechless awe and amazement at the mystery of the white
man's doings! I have often stopped to wonder at the natives' state of
mind. It must have been not unlike what is told of one of my simple
countrymen, on whose farm an aviator descended with an aëroplane, never
seen or heard of before, and who calmly walked forward to shake hands
with the heavenly visitant, whom he believed none other than the Lord!
And since horses, because of the fly, are virtually unknown in most
parts of the country, the natives were dumfounded by our mounted men,
strange centaur-like animals that they called "Kabure," after my mounted
Boer forces, of whom at first they were mortally afraid. Even bodies of
well-trained armed native soldiers have been seen to throw away their
rifles and run for dear life into the bush at the first sight of mounted
men.

[Sidenote: Parallel mountain ranges rise in tiers.]