"CIVILISED MAN" 22I

touching the ground; a leopard's pads marked the
sand by a stream, where a snake had come to drink
And outside the first village, Yeibo, there was a
round shallow pond under thorn trees with great
carp-like fish lounging lazily in the shadows. It was
sail early morning, I was happy with the sense that
every step was towards home, there was something
pecukarly English about the fish, the pond, the quite
small trees. It was a foolish mind that had come all
this way to find pleasure in a sight so vaguely, so
remotely English, a pleasure I felt again when we
came out of the forest into a stretch of land like a
Midland park; a small stream, a long undulatin-
pasture, a few cows, and groups of trees, like elms, 'm
the long grass. A quarter of a mile away the forest
wall set a limit to England, and across the stream in
single file came a few men, naked except for their
loin-cloths, carrying bows and steel-tipped arrows. It
was like the world of Miss Nesbit, where odd savage
people appear in country lanes; they might have been
coming through the Amulet out of the African forest
into an English park. We passed them, going our-
selves into Africa, while they with their bows and
arrows, their naked cicatrised bodies, went on into
the park, towards the great house and the butler's
pantry.

Six hours brought us to Peyi, where the chief was
friendly and the hut clean and the village very poor.
Nearly everyone was old and diseased, withered,
goitered, with venereal sores. The chief had no
authority; he was making a mat when we arrived,
and when he had finished the villagers crowded on
to it, pushing the chief off. There they lounged ottf-