The African forest roads have a peculiarity, which they share with certain rivers like the Amazon and the Mississippi--they are never stationary but are continually altering their position from side to side. When a large tree falls and obstructs the road, isolated travellers, like our party, will climb over it; but a large and heavily-laden caravan will find it easier to cut a fresh path round the obstruction, and this new path will thenceforth be used by all persons passing along. Meanwhile, the fallen tree slowly decays, but long before it has disappeared a young growth of forest has sprung up around it. Thus the new path becomes permanent and a curve of fifty or sixty yards in span becomes added to the road. By a continual repetition of this process the road becomes, in the course of time, a succession of serpentine curves, which meander far away from the original direction, their extreme sinuosity being disguised somewhat by the density of the forest growth, until some hunter from an adjacent village restores the road to its original direction by cutting a straight path across the loop, thus saving a circuit of perhaps several miles. Now, this path upon which I had lighted was one of these short cuts, while the road along which the Hausas and Annan were travelling, was the original winding track; and I perceived that if I made haste I might come out upon the road ahead of both parties. I therefore hurried forward as well as I could, encumbered with the various articles that I had not yet had time to make into a bundle, and in about a quarter of an hour reached the place where the path rejoined the road. Here I stood and listened for a while, but could at first hear nothing but the ordinary sounds of the forest: the chattering of monkeys, the trumpeting of a hornbill, and the squawking of parrots. At length a high falsetto laugh came faintly through the woods, and feeling secure now that the Hausas were behind me, I walked slowly on.