The Man Wore
A String Around His Waist Into Which Was Thrust A Small Leafy
Branch; The Woman Had On A Beautiful Skirt Made By Halving A
Banana Leaf, Using The Stem As Belt, And Letting The Leaf Part
Hang Down As A Skirt.
Shortly after meeting these people we
turned sharp to the right on a well beaten road.
For nearly two weeks we were to follow this road, so it may be as
well to get an idea of it. Its course was a segment of about a
sixth of the circle of Kenia's foothills. With Kenia itself as a
centre, this road swung among the lower elevations about the base
of that great mountain. Its course was mainly down and up
hundreds of the canyons radiating from the main peak, and over the
ridges between them. No sooner were we down, than we had to climb
up; and no sooner were we up, than once more down we had to
plunge. At times, however, we crossed considerable plateaus. Most
of this country was dense jungle, so dense that we could not see
on either side more than fifteen or twenty feet. Occasionally,
atop the ridges, however, we would come upon small open parks. In
these jungles live millions of human beings.
At once, as soon as we had turned into the main road, we began to
meet people. In the grain fields of the valley we saw only the
elevated boys, and a few men engaged in weaving a little house
perched on stilts. We came across some of these little houses all
completed, with conical roofs. They were evidently used for
granaries. As we mounted the slope on the other side, however,
the trees closed in, and we found ourselves marching down the
narrow aisle of the jungle itself.
It was a dense and beautiful jungle, with very tall trees and the
deepest shade; and the impenetrable tangle to the edge of the
track. Among the trees were the broad leaves of bananas and
palms, the fling of leafy vines. Over the track these leaned, so
that we rode through splashing and mottling shade. Nothing could
have seemed wilder than this apparently impenetrable and yet we
had ridden but a short distance before we realized that we were
in fact passing through cultivated land. It was, again, only a
difference in terms. Native cultivation in this district rarely
consists of clearing land and planting crops in due order, but in
leaving the forest proper as it is, and in planting foodstuffs
haphazard wherever a tiny space can be made for even three hills
of corn or a single banana. Thus they add to rather than subtract
from the typical density of the jungle. At first, we found, it
took some practice to tell a farm when we saw it.
>From the track narrow little paths wound immediately out of
sight. Sometimes we saw a wisp of smoke rising above the
undergrowth and eddying in the tops of the trees.
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