On these we mounted and for the next three hours rode across the plain, surrounded by a strong escort and with an armed Black Kendah running on each side of our horses and holding in his hand a thong attached to the ring of the bridle, no doubt to prevent any attempt to escape.
Our road ran past but not through some villages whence we saw many women and children staring at us, and through beautiful crops of mealies and other sorts of grain that in this country were now just ripening.

The luxuriant appearance of these crops suggested that the rains must have been plentiful and the season all that could be desired.

From some of the villages by the track arose a miserable sound of wailing.

Evidently their inhabitants had already heard that certain of their menkind had fallen in that morning's fight.
At the end of the third hour we began to enter the great forest which I had seen when first we looked down on Kendahland.

It was filled with splendid trees, most of them quite strange to me, but perhaps because of the denseness of their overshadowing crowns there was comparatively no undergrowth.