noon
A tree standing alone showed half its bark ripped off , tusked off by some old bull elephant , and above the tusk marks , some fifteen feet up , could be seen the rubbing mark where great shoulders had scratched themselves . As they marched , making due south , Berselius in that cold manner which never left him , and which made comradeship with the man impossible and reduced companionship to the thinnest bond , talked to Adams about the game they were after , telling in a few graphic sentences and not without feeling the wonderful story of the moving herds , to whom distance is nothing , to whom mountains are nothing , to whom the thickest jungle is nothing . The poem of the children of the mammoth who have walked the earth with the mastodon , who have stripped the trees wherein dwelt arboreal man , who have wandered under the stars and suns of a million years , seen rivers change their courses and hills arise where plains had been , and yet remain , far strewn and thinned out , it is true , but living still . At noon they halted and the tents were pitched for a four hours ' rest . Adams , whilst dinner was preparing , walked away by himself till the camp was hidden by a ridge , then he stood and looked around him . Alone , like this , the spirit of the scene appeared before him : the sun , and wind , and sky ; the vast , vast spaces of waving grass , broken by the beds of dried-up streams , strewn here and there with mimosas and thorns , here dim with the growth of vangueria bushes , here sharp and gray-green with cactus ; this giant land , infinite , sunlit , and silent , spoke to him in a new language . It seemed to Adams that he had never known freedom before .