They replied, "There are plenty of nuts in the forest—there are plenty of berries in the forest; we can stand being a day without food!"
Toward the evening of that day we began to see signs of a change in the face of the country. Now and then we would pass immense plantations of plantains, the trees loaded with fruit. We came at last to one which gorillas had visited and made short work of, having demolished lots of trees, which lay scattered right and left. Elephants had also made sad havoc in some of the plantations. Then we came across patches of sugar-cane. These plantations were scattered in the great forest, and grew in the midst of innumerable trunks and dead branches of trees that had been cut down.
The soil became more clayey, and at last we emerged from the immense forest. I saw, spread out before me, a new country, the like of which I had not seen since I had been lost in the great equatorial jungle. It was Ashira Land. The prairies were dotted plentifully with villages, which looked in the distance like ant-hills.
CHAPTER XXII.
GREAT MOUNTAINS.—ASHIRA LAND IS BEAUTIFUL.—THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID.—REACH AKOONGA'S VILLAGE.—KING OLENDA SENDS MESSENGERS AND PRESENTS.—I REACH OLENDA'S VILLAGE.
What a beautiful country! How lovely the grass seemed to me! How sweet it was to see an open space!
"Where are we?" cried I to my Okendjo men.