138 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

climbing up out of the forest, over the crest of a small
cracked hill covered with round huts while the natives
came to the door and stared at the sight of the first
white man they'd seen for months. One really
needed to be a minor prophet to emerge suddenly like
this, almost unaccompanied, with two harps and a
monkey. . . .

On a narrow path we met three men with long
curved cutlasses cutting away the bush; Alfred spoke
to them; they came from Pandemai. They said the
chief had expected the white man the night before;
he had swept a hut and cooked food for thirty men.
Alfred suggested it would be a good thing to spend
the night with the chief. He would be offended other-
wise. Duogobmai was too far, too far. ... He asked
the men about it. They shook their heads. He said
that it was more than a day's march from Pandemai.
But I couldn't speak the language, and Babu, whom
I trusted, couldn't speak any English, and Alfred I
believed to be a Har. But liars sometimes speak the
truth.

A little later a tiny stream, a patch of sand, a cloud
of butterflies, marked the boundary between Bande
country and Buzie country, and soon after we came
out into a broad sun-drenched clearing below
Pandemai. A concrete house was being built beside
the path with a fence and a garden gate, and a black
man in a European suit with an old white topee came
out to meet me and laughed and lifted his hat and
laughed again. He was a middle-aged man with a
hard mean face which he had covered defensively for
the occasion with an expression of silliness and sub-
servience. He said, "Mr. Greene, we were expecting