Having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to the
fields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarters
where the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and so
to cross in our canoe.

The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair
weather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloud
bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize
blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.

In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave
but for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the higher
tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly to
deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where
there was none.

Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned
the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by
keeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin wood was free of
undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. Fireside tradition
on the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearly
burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer.
I vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for the
fact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-like
stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's own
building, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countless
trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined
arches overhead.

Through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, as