Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

350 THINKING BLACK
negro who is "in the know." The Valomotwa can crawl
flat on their bellies year in and year out, under the trunks
of trees purposely felled to hoodwink strangers. Breaking
through grass, they walk backwards and restore each blade
to its natural position, defying wit of man to know where
they have gone. To-day I chanced on a mountaineer
doing this crafty thing, and peeping at him with oblique
glances of the eye saw his triumph of trickery. That tell-
tale grass he put as softly aside as a surgeon parts the hair
to examine a scalp wound, the result being a clever fraud
in trail-hiding. Even thus do your troubles multiply, for
the local negro is endlessly laying all his plans with con-
summate care in order to trap the pioneer.
But African troubles are like African babies, they grow
bigger if you nurse them, and the morning brings counsel.
Tumbling out early, you negotiate the Kundelungu wall
with the wind whistling through the trees. Most clutch
at a faggot from the roaring camp-fire, and up this
mountain staircase we wind, the said faggot held off to
windward so that the play of the wind sends a tongue of
flame licking the bare black body. Anon, and far up the
mountain, you hear a triumph " coo !
" from the summit,
half taunt, half brag, from a dwarf negro who is first up.
The lean, lanky six feet of humanity in front of me laughs
at the idea of the dwarf being for once *' the tallest man
in the caravan " ;
and probably our Tom Thumb was right,
after all, when he answered their taunts by saying, like
Lincoln, '* A man's legs ought to be long enough to reach
the ground." Breathing as loud as a forge bellows, here