people was certainly wilder. We here saw'their heads
decorated with curious erections of woven grass,
fastened into their hair and reaching an elevation of
a foot, like miniature Eiffel towers on their heads;1
and at a village called Muchienda we acquired two
quaint-shaped straw hats with ostrich feathers sticking
in the top, quite different to anything we had
seen elsewhere. As we approached this village a
long string of natives passed us on their way to h u n t;
on their heads they
carried bark cases full
of nets, which they
stretch across the
valleys and drive the
game into them. Muchienda
was a lovely
village by a rushing
stream full of rocks,
which formed a little
D E CO R A T ED H U T DOOR waterfall; the stream
was shaded by magnificent
timber, and a background of lovely mountains
made us think Muchienda an ideal spot, at
which we would willingly have tarried longer.
Every day, as we approached the Sabi Valley, the
scenery became grander; the dreary high plateau
gave place to deep valleys and high rugged
mountains ; the vegetation was much more luxuriant
and the atmosphere many degrees hotter, so hot that
during our midday halts we did not care to wander
1 Vide illustration, p. 225.
very far from our camp, especially as we had a good
deal of manual labour to perform apart from the
actual travelling, in tent pitching, bed making, and
cooking, for our white men were generally so tired
STRAW HAT
with driving' and packing the donkeys that we could
not ask them to do anything after the march was
over.
We soon got accustomed to sleeping on the
ground. When it was unusually rugged, for the
grass grows here in tufts like the hair on the niggers’