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

KAVANGA: GATES OF THE MORNING 379
Nearing noon the boys fire a broadside of their match-
locks into a dense cavalcade of elephants, a mere pinprick
in the armour-plating : £10,000 of ivory on the move
what a sight ! Each tusker with five or more wives
according to the length of ivory. The tusks, too, of
varied sorts and colours, some not at all normal, and one
great bull with only one tooth. Another has a freak tusk,
and while the normal one gleams gracefully up in posi-
tion, its twin tusk twists down in the opposite direction,
the great beast looking a horror. But remember, animals
though they are, this is not a mob but an army, and one
great bull seems to lord it over the whole battalion. In
response to a most aristocratic wave of his trunk, like a
Field Marshal's baton, away they rush straight ahead,
clearing for us, not a path but a royal avenue. The
coincidence of our far-oflf landmark, the steel-blue wall
of Kundelungu, coming for once into dead line with the
track of this army corps of elephants, is surely eloquent
of the goings forth of our God being prepared as the
morning. Here at last is your prepared path—and made
by elephants, too.
But there is more to follow. Not for nothing are
these woods christened by the negroes "the Lord's
Larder." "Plantations of God" is their second name
for the same idea, and as the native would not dare to
dream of driving God out of His own garden, why should
I ? " Every beast of the forest is Mine," said The Same,
Who proves it by sending this densely packed herd
galloping true for objective. (Why recognise God in