“You know where you may expect to find other animals,” he said, “and you also know their times.” And then naming first the leopard, he told them the kind of place that it frequents, and at what hours it seeks its prey, while the eager audience roared assent. So he did with the elephant, the gorilla and others. But the serpent, he told them, is found everywhere, often in the path before them, even in their houses, and always when least expected. Then he compared its powers with those of other animals, describing the leopard’s strength to fight, the fleetness of the deer in escaping, and how the monkey climbs; but how the serpent outfights the leopard, outruns the deer, outclimbs the monkey. The audience knowing well all the habits of the animals of the forest, was wildly appreciative, and several times took the sermon out of the speaker’s mouth. On another occasion, a young man, Amvama, preached on the “Lost Sheep” of the parable, describing its peculiar helplessness. All the animals of the forest, however far they wander, can find their way back—but not the sheep; every other animal has some peculiar defense against its enemies of the forest, but the sheep is defenseless. The sheep lost in the forest cannot of itself get back to the town, and it is sure to be devoured by the wild beasts. Amvama did not fail to apply this to our own moral plight as lost and helpless. But, we will return to the camp-fire in the forest, and the dim and dusky company seated around it, and the larger circle of fitful shadows and furtive forms that come gliding out, and back again into the forest. The opaque darkness pours forth such a volume of sound as never was heard in any forest elsewhere;—a thousand mingled noises of the night, weird, and difficult to associate with any bodily form, but belonging, one might easily fancy, to the shadow spirits of the forest, some of them perhaps the spirits of dead men—of those who, labouring under heavy loads, fell by the wayside, and died of sickness or fatigue, whose skeletons we sometimes pass; of those who by the spell of an enemy’s fetish lost their way, and never saw the face of man again; of those who for some crime have been driven forth into the forest by their own people, to die of hunger, or by the beasts. Above all the myriad noises of the night, and separate from them, at times there falls upon the ear a prolonged cry of distress, that smites upon the heart, heard always in the African forest and never afterwards forgotten. It is a succession of ten or twelve long cries, shrill, tremulous and piercing; rather low at first, and vague, but gradually rising to a cry of definite terror, and again descending until it is lost in the volume of the forest noise.