Il8 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

wards Kolahun a piccaninny followed at a jog-trot.
He was about two feet high; he carried an empty
sausage tin and an empty Ideal milk tin, one in each
hand. Men turned and told him to go back, but he
wouldn't obey; he had to run to keep up, but he kept
up. He wanted to go with his father. The men
laughed and shouted up the line and presently his
father turned back and ordered him home. The line
passed them and went on: they stood there, the tiny
child sullen and unhappy and obstinate, the father
telling him to go back as one says "Home" to a dog.
At last he left him there, stubbornly planted.

The broad red clay road had been improved for the
President's coming, the trees had been cut down on
either side and the trunks tipped into the great palmy
ravines. The heavy mist lay low between the hills;
one couldn't see how close one was to the great forest.
A deer sprang across the road, a little brown deer
which might have belonged to an English park, not
the royal antelope which lucky travellers may still
see in the Republic, no larger than a rabbit, except for
its slim legs, ten inches high with horns of less than
an inch. The road was all right so long as the mist
held, but all the shade had been cut away, and I
hurried to leave it behind before the sun had reached
the middle sky. It was half-past nine when the road
came to an end in Kolahun, the headquarters of
Mr. Reeves.

It occurred to me that though I had been told that
the President had gone, and Mr. Reeves presumably
with him, it would be wise at least to inquire for
the Commissioner. The town seemed empty, the
green triumphal arches for the President were dusty