THE day is done. Two more lion skins hang in the palm leaf banda of the skinner; the tension and the throb of the chase are past.

Now we sit here bathed and subdued, watching the day fade over the low level horizon of Africa.

Evening comes as a benediction in our camp. Replete as the days are with adventure and excitement, it closes the scene of each diurnal phenomenon with a profound and satisfying experience.

The chill of the upland plains is just suggested in the vagrant breeze, and the camp fire before our thatched grass hut is a welcome addition to the setting. Supper is yet to come and we rest in our canvas camp chairs, in silence and blissful contemplation of the sunset.

It is a daily religious ceremony.

There is no doubt about it: we are Pantheists here. No pre-occupation takes precedence of this great farewell performance of the day. We view it in rapt attention.

Sunsets have been considered banal by some, and many sunsets do strike a commonplace note in their pyrotechnics. But in Tanganyika their charm is unsullied by stereotyped effects; gaudy lighting; overplayed dramatic pauses.

The scene here starts reluctantly. Great billows of dense smoke like vapor gather above the western rim and obscure the sun. A mood of melancholy droops over the heavens and life seems poised in indecision and doubt. The canopy overhead is still that pure azure of faultless ether. Immeasurable distance extends above, and space itself is non-existent.

There is no hint there of change.

But at the level of the eyes are sullen clouds, a recalcitrant solar orb, and the dimming of color intensities that forebode decay.

Below the level of these tumbled billows of smoke, a transition occurs: the blue that was, that darker tint which gathers at the edge of the firmament, descends a degree in the spectrum, and is by magic a pastel green of the very faintest verdure. A strange thing, to see a green sky!

Stark against this background of incongruous color, stand the low hills with their flat top mimosa trees; and over yonder at the very side wings of the stage, beetles the shadowed profile of Kuba Kuba, the lone mountain of our landscape.

Now all is in readiness for the hero to appear. He does so! Hot and naked in flame, the sun dips a sector of its periphery below the curtain of dusky clouds. It is blazing copper, large and imminent. One feels its turged, inflammatory emanations, as if the defiance of the shielding earthly moisture of the low hung screen, excited it to more ardent function.

It seems to drop across the intervening area of clear heaven and strike the edge of the earth like a burning meteor.

Vanished is the pastel green, and in its stead a most delicate lavender background surrounds this fulminant sphere.

The dense curtain above, now no longer murky and leaden, has changed to dove color, soft and gray. It is not thick as it seemed, but translucent and floculent.

Across the gentle undulations of this texture, gay and roseate blushes seem to pass with delightful uncertainty. The clear space below it, burns with greater heat; all the elements of blue have been consumed and in their stead, dazzling incandescence takes their place.

Then as though a furnace door were flung open, the whole heavens burst into flame. All moods and pathos flash into life and passion. A gigantic conflagration sweeps over the sky. Driven as by a mighty wind the flames of destruction leap from crest to crest setting each afire with its torrid intensity. The whole celestial universe is a mass of intolerable radiance. It is turned to molten gold; consumed in infinite glory.