The Sky In Africa Is Always Very Wide, Greater Than Any Other
Skies.
Between horizon and horizon is more space than any other
world contains.
It is as though the cup of heaven had been
pressed a little flatter; so that while the boundaries have
widened, the zenith, with its flaming sun, has come nearer. And
yet that is not a constant quantity either. I have seen one edge
of the sky raised straight up a few million miles, as though some
one had stuck poles under its corners, so that the western heaven
did not curve cup-wise over to the horizon at all as it did
everywhere else, but rather formed the proscenium of a gigantic
stage. On this stage they had piled great heaps of saffron yellow
clouds, and struck shafts of yellow light, and filled the spaces
with the lurid portent of a storm-while the twenty thousand foot
mountains below, crouched whipped and insignificant to the earth.
We sat atop our butte for an hour while H. looked through his
'scope. After the soft silent immensity of the earth, running
away to infinity, with its low waves, and its scattered fleet of
hills, it was with difficulty that we brought our gaze back to
details and to things near at hand. Directly below us we could
make out many different-hued specks. Looking closely, we could
see that those specks were game animals. They fed here and there
in bands of from ten to two hundred, with valleys and hills
between.
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