182 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

the immediate slaughter there in front of the hut:
the little kid held down on the ground by its legs
like a crucified child, the knife across the throat and
the screams through the flow of blood. The kid took
a long time dying, the blood welling out across the
earth, gathering in pools on the baked unporous
ground, as the light went and someone in the chiefs
enclosure began to shake a rattle. And it was good
to know that one had not been deserted.

Bamakama

The next day wasn't so good. We were out on the
trail with a guide from Koinya by seven, but the
paths were very rough for the carriers, and they and
my cousin fell a long way behind. There was a multi-
plicity of little paths and the country was slowly
changing from the Liberian hills and forest to a
plateau covered with tall elephant grass twice tie
height of a man, a plateau which I suppose stretches
northward to what Mungo Park called the Mountains
of Kong, and then on again to the Niger. On one of
these tiny paths I saw the only horse, with the excep-
tion of die bony mare in Freetown, I saw in West
Africa; an old Mandingo with a white beard and a
turban sat it and watched us go by through the grass.
A boy carried all their gear upon his head. He may
have come from very far away, perhaps from the
Sahara,

After three and a half hours' march we reached

the St. Paul River again, or the Diani as this upper

reach is called. On either side the forest followed it,

'a slow shadowed river, seventy yards across, under