PART VI.. In Masailand.

IN MASAILAND.

XXXIII.

OVER THE LIKIPIA ESCARPMENT.

Owing to an outbreak of bubonic plague, and consequent quarantine, we had recruited our men outside Nairobi, and had sent them, in charge of C., to a little station up the line.

Billy and I saw to the loading of our equipment on the train, and at two o'clock, in solitary state, set forth. Our only attendants were Mohammed and Memba Sasa, who had been fumigated and inoculated and generally Red-Crossed for the purpose.

The little narrow-gauge train doubled and twisted in its climb up the range overlooking Nairobi and the Athi Plains. Fields of corn grew so tall as partially to conceal villages of round, grass-thatched huts with conical roofs; we looked down into deep ravines where grew the broad-leaved bananas; the steep hillsides had all been carefully cultivated. Savages leaning on spears watched us puff heavily by. Women, richly ornamented with copper wire or beads, toiled along bent under loads carried by means of a band across the top of the head. Naked children rushed out to wave at us. We were steaming quite comfortably through Africa as it had been for thousands of years before the white man came.

At Kikuyu Station we came to a halt. Kikuyu Station ordinarily embarks about two passengers a month, I suppose. Now it was utterly swamped with business, for on it had descended all our safari of thirty-nine men and three mules. Thirty of the thirty-nine yelled and shrieked and got in the wrong place, as usual. C. and the train men and the stationmaster and our responsible boys heaved and tugged and directed, ordered, commanded. At length the human element was loaded to its places and locked in. Then the mules had to be urged up a very narrow gang-lank into a dangerous-looking car. Quite sensibly they declined to take chances. We persuaded them. The process was quite simple. Two of the men holding the ends at a safe distance stretched a light strong cord across the beasts' hind legs, and sawed it back and forth.

We clanged the doors shut, climbed aboard, and the train at last steamed on. Now bits of forest came across our way, deep, shaded, with trailing curtain vines, and wide leaves as big as table tops, and high, lush, impenetrable undergrowth full of flashing birds, fathomless shadows, and inquisitive monkeys. Occasionally we emerged to the edge of a long oval meadow, set in depressions among hills, like our Sierra meadows. Indeed so like were these openings to those in our own wooded mountains that we always experienced a distinct shock of surprise as the familiar woods parted to disclose a dark solemn savage with flashing spear.

We stopped at various stations, and descended and walked about in the gathering shadows of the forest. It was getting cool. Many little things attracted our attention, to remain in our memories as isolated pictures. Thus I remember one grave savage squatted by the track playing on a sort of mandoline-shaped instrument. It had two strings, and he twanged these alternately, without the slightest effort to change their pitch by stopping with his fingers. He bent his head sidewise, and listened with the meticulous attention of a connoisseur. We stopped at that place for fully ten minutes, but not for a second did he leave off twanging his two strings, nor did he even momentarily relax his attention.

It was now near sundown. We had been climbing steadily. The train shrieked twice, and unexpectedly slid out to the edge of the Likipia Escarpment. We looked down once more into the great Rift Valley.

The Rift Valley is as though a strip of Africa--extending half the length of the continent--had in time past sunk bodily some thousands of feet, leaving a more or less sheer escarpment on either side, and preserving intact its own variegated landscape in the bottom. We were on the Likipia Escarpment. We looked across to the Mau Escarpment, where the country over which our train had been travelling continued after its interruption by the valley. And below us were mountains, streams, plains. The westering sun threw strong slants of light down and across.

The engine shut off its power, and we slid silently down the rather complicated grades and curves of the descent. A noble forest threw its shadows over us. Through the chance openings we caught glimpses of the pale country far below. Across high trestle bridges we rattled, and craned over to see the rushing white water of the mountain torrents a hundred feet down. The shriek of our engine echoed and re-echoed weirdly from the serried trunks of trees and from the great cliffs that seemed to lift themselves as we descended.

We debarked at Kijabe well after dark. It is situated on a ledge in the escarpment, is perhaps a quarter-mile wide, and includes nothing more elaborate than the station, a row of Indian dukkas, and two houses of South Africans set back towards the rise in the cliffs. A mile or so away, and on a little higher level, stand the extensive buildings of an American mission. It is, I believe, educational as well as sectarian, is situated in one of the most healthful climates of East Africa, and is prosperous.

At the moment we saw none of these things. We were too busy getting men, mules, and equipment out of the train. Our lanterns flared in the great wind that swept down the defile; and across the track little fires flared too. Shortly we made the acquaintance of the South Africander who furnished us our ox teams and wagon; and of a lank, drawling youth who was to be our "rider." The latter was very anxious to get started, so we piled all our stores and equipment but those immediately necessary for the night aboard the great wagon. Then we returned to the dak-bungalow for a very belated supper. While eating this we discussed our plans.

These were in essence very simple. Somewhere south of the Great Thirst of the Sotik a river called the Narossara. Back of the river were high mountains, and down the river were benches dropping off by thousands of feet to the barren country of Lake Magahdi. Over some of this country ranged the Greater Kudu, easily the prize buck of East Africa. We intended to try for a Greater Kudu.

People laughed at us. The beast is extremely rare; it ranges over a wide area; it inhabits the thickest sort of cover in a sheer mountainous country; its senses are wonderfully acute; and it is very wary. A man might, once in a blue moon, get one by happening upon it accidentally, but deliberately to go after it was sheer lunacy. So we were told. As a matter of fact, we thought so ourselves, but Greater Kudu was as good an excuse as another.

The most immediate of our physical difficulties was the Thirst. Six miles from Kijabe we would leave the Kedong River. After that was no more water for two days and nights. During that time we should be forced to travel and rest in alternation day and night, with a great deal of travel and very little rest. We should be able to carry for the men a limited amount of water on the ox wagon, but the cattle could not drink. It was a hard, anxious grind. A day's journey beyond the first water after the Thirst we should cross the Southern Guaso Nyero River. Then two days should land us at the Narossara. There we must leave our ox wagon and push on with our tiny safari. We planned to relay back for porters from our different camps.

That was our whole plan. Our transport rider's object in starting this night was to reach the Kedong River, and there to outspan until our arrival next day. The cattle would thus get a good feed and rest. Then at four in the afternoon we would set out to conquer the Thirst. After that it would be a question of travelling to suit the oxen.

Next morning, when we arose, we found one of the wagon Kikuyus awaiting us. His tale ran that after going four miles, the oxen had been stampeded by lions. In the mix-up the dusselboom had been broken. He demanded a new dusselboom. I looked as wise as though I knew just what that meant; and told him largely, to help himself. Shortly he departed carrying what looked to be the greater part of a forest tree.

We were in no hurry, so we did not try to get our safari under way before eight o'clock. It consisted of twenty-nine porters, the gunbearers, three personal boys, three syces, and the cook. Of this lot some few stand out from the rest, and deserve particular attention.

Of course I had my veterans, Memba Sasa and Mohammed. There was also Kongoni, gunbearer, elsewhere described. The third gunbearer was Marrouki, a Wakamba. He was the personal gunbearer of a Mr. Twigg, who very courteously loaned him for this trip as possessing some knowledge of the country. He was a small person, with stripes about his eyes; dressed in a Scotch highland cap, khaki breeches, and a shooting coat miles too big for him. His soul was earnest, his courage great, his training good, his intelligence none too brilliant. Timothy, our cook, was pure Swahili. He was a thin, elderly individual, with a wrinkled brow of care. This represented a conscientious soul. He tried hard to please, but he never could quite forget that he had cooked for the Governor's safari. His air was always one of silent disapproval of our modest outfit. So well did he do, however, often under trying circumstances, that at the close of the expedition Billy presented him with a very fancy knife. To her vast astonishment he burst into violent sobs.

"Why, what is it?" she asked.

"Oh, memsahib," he wailed, "I wanted a watch!"

As personal boy Billy had a Masai named Geyeye. The members of this proud and aristocratic tribe rarely condescend to work for the white man; but when they do, they are very fine servants, for they are highly intelligent. Geyeye was short and very, very ugly. Perhaps this may partly explain his leaving tribal life, for the Masai generally are over six feet.

C.'s man was an educated Coast Swahili named Abba Ali. This individual was very smart. He wore a neatly-trimmed Vandyke beard, a flannel boating hat, smart tailored khakis, and carried a rattan cane. He was alert, quick, and intelligent. His position was midway between that of personal boy and headman.

Of the rank and file we began with twenty-nine. Two changed their minds before we were fairly started, and departed in the night. There was no time to get regular porters; but fortunately a Kikuyu chief detailed two wild savages from his tribe to act as carriers. These two children of nature drifted in with pleasant smiles and little else save knick-knacks. From our supplies we gave them two thin jerseys, reaching nearly to the knees. Next day they appeared with broad tucks sewed around the middle! They looked like "My Mama didn't use wool soap." We then gave it up, and left them free and untrammelled.

They differed radically. One was past the first enthusiasms and vanities of youth. He was small, unobtrusive, unornamented. He had no possessions save the jersey, the water-bottle, and the blanket we ourselves supplied. The blanket he crossed bandolier fashion on one shoulder. It hung down behind like a tasselled sash. His face was little and wizened and old. He was quiet and uncomplaining, and the "easy mark" for all the rest. We had constantly to be interfering to save him from imposition as to too heavy loads, too many jobs, and the like. Nearing the close of the long expedition, when our loads were lighter and fewer, one day C. spoke up.

"I'm going to give the old man a good time," said he. "I doubt if he's ever had one before, or if he ever will again. He's that sort of a meek damnfool."

So it was decreed that Kimau should carry nothing for the rest of the trip, was to do no more work, was to have all he wanted to eat. It was a treat to see him. He accepted these things without surprise, without spoken thanks; just as he would have accepted an increased supply of work and kicks. Before his little fire he squatted all day, gazing vacantly off into space, or gnawing on a piece of the meat he always kept roasting on sticks. He spoke to no one; he never smiled or displayed any obvious signs of enjoyment; but from him radiated a feeling of deep content.

His companion savage was a young blood, and still affected by the vanities of life. His hair he wore in short tight curls, resembling the rope hair of a French poodle, liberally anointed with castor-oil and coloured with red-paint clay. His body, too, was turned to bronze by the same method, so that he looked like a beautiful smooth metal statue come to life. To set this quality off he wore glittering collars, bracelets, and ear ornaments of polished copper and brass. When he joined us his sole costume was a negligent two-foot strip of cotton cloth. After he had received his official jersey, he carefully tied the cloth over his wonderful head; nor as far as we knew did he again remove it until the end of the expedition. All his movements were inexpressibly graceful. They reminded one somehow of Flaxman's drawings of the Greek gods. His face, too, was good-natured and likeable. A certain half feminine, wild grace, combined with the queer effect of his headgear, caused us to name him Daphne. At home he was called Kingangui. At first he carried his burden after the fashion of savages--on the back; and kept to the rear of the procession; and at evening consorted only with old Lightfoot. As soon as opportunity offered, he built himself a marvellous iridescent ball of marabout feathers. Each of these he split along the quill, so that they curled and writhed in the wind. This picturesque charm he suspended from a short pole in front of his tent. Also, he belonged to the Kikuyu tribe; he ate no game meat, but confined his diet to cornmeal porridge. We were much interested in watching Daphne's gradual conversion from savage ways to those of the regular porter. Within two weeks he was carrying his load on his head or shoulder, and trying to keep up near the head of the safari. The charm of feathers disappeared shortly after, I am sorry to say. He took his share of the meat. Within two months Daphne was imitating as closely as possible the manners and customs of his safari mates. But he never really succeeded in looking anything but the wild and graceful savage he was.

FOOTNOTES:

After the fashion of the Canadian tump line.

Pronounce all the syllables.

An entirely different stream from that flowing north of Mt. Kenia.

Pronounce every syllable.

His official name was Lightfoot, Queen of the Fairies, because of his ballet-like costume.

XXXIV.

TO THE KEDONG.

For four hours we descended the valley through high thorn scrub or the occasional grassy openings. We were now in the floor of the Rift Valley, and both along the escarpments and in the floor of the great blue valley itself mountains were all about us. Most of the large ones were evidently craters; and everywhere were smaller kopjes or buttes, that in their day had also served as blow holes for subterranean fires.

At the end of this time we arrived at the place where we were supposed to find the wagon. No wagon was there.

The spot was in the middle of a level plain on which grew very scattered bushes, a great deal like the sparser mesquite growths of Arizona. Towards the Likipia Escarpment, and about half-way to its base, a line of trees marked the course of the Kedong River. Beyond that, fairly against the mountain, we made out a settler's house.

Leaving Billy and the safari, C. and I set out for this house. The distance was long, and we had not made half of it before thunder clouds began to gather. They came up thick and black behind the escarpment, and rapidly spread over the entire heavens. We found the wagon shortly, still mending its dusselboom, or whatever the thing was. Leaving instructions for it to proceed to a certain point on the Kedong River, we started back for our safari.

It rained. In ten minutes the dusty plains, as far as the eye could reach, were covered with water two or three inches deep, from which the sparse bunches of grasses grew like reeds in a great marshy lake. We splashed along with the water over our ankles. The channels made by the game trails offered natural conduits, and wherever there was the least grade they had become rushing brooks. We found the safari very bedraggled. Billy had made a mound of valuables, atop which she perched, her waterproof cape spread as wide as possible, a good deal like a brooding hen. We set out for the meeting-point on the Kedong. In half an hour we had there found a bit of higher ground and had made camp.

As suddenly as they had gathered the storm clouds broke away. The expiring sun sent across the valley a flood of golden light, that gilded the rugged old mountain of Suswa over the way.

"Directly on the other side of Suswa," C. told me, "there is a 'pan' of hard clay. This rain will fill it, and we shall find water there. We can take a night's rest, and set off comfortably in the morning."

So the rain that had soaked us so thoroughly was a blessing after all. While we were cooking supper the wagon passed us, its wheels and frame creaking, its great whip cracking like a rifle, its men shrieking at the imperturbable team of eighteen oxen. It would travel until the oxen wanted to graze, or sleep, or scratch an ear, or meditate on why is a Kikuyu. Thereupon they would be outspanned and allowed to do it, whatever it was, until they were ready to go on again. Then they would go on. These sequences might take place at any time of the day or night, and for greater or lesser intervals of time. That was distinctly up to the oxen; the human beings had mighty little to say in the matter. But transport riding, from the point of view of the rank outsider, really deserves a chapter of its own.

XXXV.

THE TRANSPORT RIDER.

The wagon is one evolved in South Africa--a long, heavily-constructed affair, with ingenious braces and timbers so arranged as to furnish the maximum clearance with the greatest facility for substitution in case the necessity for repairs might arise. The whole vehicle can be dismounted and reassembled in a few hours; so that unfordable streams or impossible bits of country can be crossed piecemeal. Its enormous wheels are set wide apart. The brake is worked by a crank at the rear, like a reversal of the starting mechanism of a motor car. Bolted to the frame on either side between the front and rear wheels are capacious cupboards, and two stout water kegs swing to and fro when the craft is under way. The net carrying capacity of such a wagon is from three to four thousand pounds.

This formidable vehicle, in our own case, was drawn by a team of eighteen oxen. The biggest brutes, the wheelers, were attached to a tongue, all the others pulled on a long chain. The only harness was the pronged yoke that fitted just forward of the hump. Over rough country the wheelers were banged and jerked about savagely by the tongue; they did not seem to mind it but exhibited a certain amount of intelligence in manipulation.

To drive these oxen we had one white man named Brown, and two small Kikuyu savages. One of these worked the brake crank in the rear while the other preceded the lead cattle. Brown exercised general supervision, a long-lashed whip and Boer-Dutch expletives and admonitions.

In transport riding, as this game is called, there is required a great amount of especial skill though not necessarily a high degree of intelligence. Along the flats all goes well enough, but once in the unbelievable rough country of a hill trek the situation alters. A man must know cattle and their symptoms. It is no light feat to wake up eighteen sluggish bovine minds to the necessity for effort, and then to throw so much dynamic energy into the situation that the whole eighteen will begin to pull at once. That is the secret, unanimity; an ox is the most easily discouraged working animal on earth. If the first three couples begin to haul before the others have aroused to their effort, they will not succeed in budging the wagon an inch, but after a moment's struggle will give up completely. By that time the leaders respond to the command and throw themselves forward in the yoke. In vain. They cannot pull the wagon and their wheel comrades too. Therefore they give up. By this time, perhaps, the lash has aroused the first lot to another effort. And so they go, pulling and hauling against each other, getting nowhere, until the end is an exhausted team, a driver half insane, and a great necessity for unloading.

A good driver, on the other hand, shrieks a few premonitory Dutch words--and then! I suppose inside those bovine heads the effect is somewhat that of a violent electric explosion. At any rate it hits them all at once, and all together, in response, they surge against their yokes. The heavily laden wagon creaks, groans, moves forward. The hurricane of Dutch and the volleys of whip crackings rise to a crescendo. We are off!

To perform just this little simple trick of getting the thing started requires not only a peculiar skill or gift, but also lungs of brass and a throat of iron. A transport rider without a voice is as a tenor in the same fix. He may--and does--get so hoarse that it is a pain to hear him; but as long as he can croak in good volume he is all right. Mere shouting will not do. He must shriek, until to the sympathetic bystander it seems that his throat must split wide open. Furthermore, he must shriek the proper things. It all sounds alike to every one but transport riders and oxen; but as a matter of fact it is Boer-Dutch, nicely assorted to suit different occasions. It is incredible that oxen should distinguish; but, then, it is also incredible that trout should distinguish the nice differences in artificial flies.

After the start has been made successfully, the craft must be kept under way. To an unbiassed bystander the whole affair looks insane. The wagon creaks and sways and groans and cries aloud as it bumps over great boulders in the way; the leading Kikuyu dances nimbly and shrills remarks at the nearest cattle; the tail Kikuyu winds energetically back and forth on his little handle, and tries to keep his feet. And Brown! he is magnificent! His long lash sends out a volley of rifle reports, down, up, ahead, back; his cracked voice roars out an unending stream of apparent gibberish. Back and forth along the line of the team he skips nimbly, the sweat streaming from his face. And the oxen plod along, unhasting, unexcited, their eyes dreamy, chewing the cud of yesterday's philosophic reflections. The situation conveys the general impression of a peevish little stream breaking against great calm cliffs. All this frantic excitement and expenditure of energy is so apparently purposeless and futile, the calm cattle seem so aloof and superior to it all, so absolutely unaffected by it. They are going slowly, to be sure; their gait may be maddeningly deliberate, but evidently they do not intend to be hurried. Why not let them take their own speed?

But all this hullabaloo means something after all. It does its business, and the top of the boulder-strewn hill is gained. Without it the whole concern would have stopped, and then the wagon would have to be unloaded before a fresh start could have been made. Results with cattle are not shown by facial expression nor by increased speed, but simply by continuance. They will plod up steep hills or along the level at the same placid gait. Only in the former case they require especial treatment.

In case the wagon gets stuck on a hill, as will occasionally happen, so that all the oxen are discouraged at once, we would see one of the Kikuyus leading the team back and forth, back and forth, on the side hill just ahead of the wagon. This is to confuse their minds, cause them to forget their failure, and thus to make another attempt.

At one stretch we had three days of real mountains. N'gombe Brown shrieked like a steam calliope all the way through. He lasted the distance, but had little camp-fire conversation even with his beloved Kikuyus.

When the team is outspanned, which in the waterless country of forced marches is likely to be almost any time of the day or night, N'gombe Brown sought a little rest. For this purpose he had a sort of bunk that let down underneath the wagon. If it were daytime, the cattle were allowed to graze under supervision of one of the Kikuyus. If it was night time they were tethered to the long chain, where they lay in a somnolent double row. A lantern at the head of the file and one at the wagon's tail were supposed to discourage lions. In a bad lion country fires were added to these defences.

N'gombe Brown thus worked hard through varied and long hours in strict intimacy with stupid and exasperating beasts. After working hours he liked to wander out to watch those same beasts grazing! His mind was as full of cattle as that! Although we offered him reading matter, he never seemed to care for it, nor for long-continued conversation with white people not of his trade. In fact the only gleam of interest I could get out of him was by commenting on the qualities or peculiarities of the oxen. He had a small mouth-organ on which he occasionally performed, and would hold forth for hours with his childlike Kikuyus. In the intelligence to follow ordinary directions he was an infant. We had to iterate and reiterate in words of one syllable our directions as to routes and meeting-points, and then he was quite as apt to go wrong as right. Yet, I must repeat, he knew thoroughly all the ins and outs of a very difficult trade, and understood, as well, how to keep his cattle always fit and in good condition. In fact he was a little hipped on what the "dear n'gombes" should or should not be called upon to do.

One incident will illustrate all this better than I could explain it. When we reached the Narossara River we left the wagon and pushed on afoot. We were to be gone an indefinite time, and we left N'gombe Brown and his outfit very well fixed. Along the Narossara ran a pleasant shady strip of high jungle; the country about was clear and open; but most important of all, a white man of education and personal charm occupied a trading boma, or enclosure, near at hand. An accident changed our plans and brought us back unexpectedly at the end of a few weeks. We found that N'gombe Brown had trekked back a long day's journey, and was encamped alone at the end of a spur of mountains. We sent native runners after him. He explained his change of base by saying that the cattle feed was a little better at his new camp! Mind you this: at the Narossara the feed was quite good enough, the oxen were doing no work, there was companionship, books, papers, and even a phonograph to while away the long weeks until our return. N'gombe Brown quite cheerfully deserted all this to live in solitude where he imagined the feed to be microscopically better!

FOOTNOTES:

N'gombe = oxen.

XXXVI.

ACROSS THE THIRST.

We were off, a bright, clear day after the rains. Suswa hung grayish pink against the bluest of skies. Our way slanted across the Rift Valley to her base, turned the corner, and continued on the other side of the great peak until we had reached the rainwater "pan" on her farther side. It was a long march.

The plains were very wide and roomy. Here and there on them rose many small cones and craters, lava flows and other varied evidences of recent volcanic activity. Geologically recent, I mean. The grasses of the flowing plains were very brown, and the molehill craters very dark; the larger craters blasted and austere; the higher escarpment in the background blue with a solemn distance. The sizes of things were not originally fitted out for little tiny people like human beings. We walked hours to reach landmarks apparently only a few miles away.

In this manner we crept along industriously until noon, by which time we had nearly reached the shoulder of Suswa, around which we had to double. The sun was strong, and the men not yet hardened to the work. We had many stragglers. After lunch Memba Sasa and I strolled along on a route flanking that of the safari, looking for the first of our meat supply. Within a short time I had killed a Thompson's gazelle. Some solemn giraffes looked on at the performance, and then moved off like mechanical toys.

The day lengthened. We were in the midst of wonderful scenery. Our objection grew to be that it took so long to put any of it behind us. Insensibly, however, we made progress. Suddenly, as it seemed, we found ourselves looking at the other side of Suswa, and various brand-new little craters had moved up to take the places of our old friends. At last, about half-past four, we topped the swell of one of the numerous and interminable land billows that undulate across all plains countries here, and saw a few miles away the wagon outspanned. We reached it about sunset, to be greeted by the welcome news that there was indeed water in the pan.

We unsaddled just before dark, and I immediately started towards the game herds, many of which were grazing a half-mile away. The gazelle would supply our own larder, but meat for hard-worked man was very desirable. I shot a hartebeeste, made the prearranged signal for men to carry meat, and returned to camp.

Even yet the men were not all in. We took lanterns and returned along the road, for the long marches under a desert sun are no joke. At last we had accounted for all but two. These we had to abandon. Next day we found their loads, but never laid eyes on them again. Thus early our twenty-nine became twenty-seven.

About nine o'clock, just as we were turning, a number of lions began to roar. Usually a lion roars once or twice by way of satisfaction after leaving a kill. These, however, were engaged in driving game, and hence trying to make as much noise as possible. We distinguished plainly seven individuals, perhaps more. The air trembled with the sound as to the deepest tones of a big organ, only the organ is near and enclosed, while these vibrations were in the open air and remote. For a few moments the great salvos would boom across the veld, roll after roll of thunder; then would ensue a momentary dead silence; then a single voice would open, to be joined immediately by the others.

We awoke next day to an unexpected cold drizzle. This was a bit uncomfortable, from one point of view, and most unusual, but it robbed the thirst of its terrors. We were enabled to proceed leisurely, and to get a good sleep near water every night. The wagon had, as usual, pulled out some time during the night.

Our way led over a succession of low rolling ridges each higher than its predecessor. Game herds fed in the shallow valleys between. At about ten o'clock we came to the foot of the Mau Escarpment, and also to the unexpected sight of the wagon outspanned. N'gombe Brown explained to us that the oxen had refused to proceed farther in face of a number of lions that came around to sniff at them. Then the rain had come on, and he had been unwilling to attempt the Mau while the footing was slippery. This sounded reasonable; in fact, it was still reasonable. The grass was here fairly neck high, and we found a rain-filled water-hole. Therefore we decided to make camp. C. and I wandered out in search of game. We tramped a great deal of bold, rugged country, both in cañon bottoms and along the open ridges, but found only a rhinoceros, one bush-buck and a dozen hartebeeste. African game, as a general rule, avoids a country where the grass grows very high. We enjoyed, however, some bold and wonderful mountain scenery, and obtained glimpses through the flying murk of the vast plains and the base of Suswa. On a precipitous cañon cliff we found a hanging garden of cactus and of looped cactus-like vines that was a marvel to behold. We ran across the hartebeeste on our way home. Our men were already out of meat; the hartebeeste of yesterday had disappeared. These porters are a good deal like the old-fashioned Michigan lumberjacks--they take a good deal of feeding for the first few days. When we came upon the little herd in the neck-high grass, I took a shot. At the report the animal went down flat. We wandered over slowly. Memba Sasa whetted his knife and walked up. Thereupon Mr. Hartebeeste jumped to his feet, flirted his tail gaily, and departed. We followed him a mile or so, but he got stronger and gayer every moment, until at last he frisked out of the landscape quite strong and hearty. In all my African experience I lost only six animals hit by bullets, as I took infinite pains and any amount of time to hunt down wounded beasts. This animal was, I think, "creased" by too high a shot. Certainly he was not much injured; but certainly he got a big shock to start with.

The little herd had gone on. I got down and crawled on hands and knees in the thick grass. It was slow work, and I had to travel by landmarks. When I finally reckoned I had about reached the proper place, I stood up suddenly, my rifle at ready. So dense was the cover and so still the air that I had actually crawled right into the middle of the band! While we were cutting up the meat the sun broke through strongly.

Therefore the wagon started on up the Mau at six o'clock. Twelve hours later we followed. The fine drizzle had set in again. We were very glad the wagon had taken advantage of the brief dry time.

From the top of the sheer rise we looked back for the last time over the wonderful panorama of the Rift Valley. Before us were wide rounded hills covered with a scattered small growth that in general appearance resembled scrub oak. It sloped away gently until it was lost in mists. Later, when these cleared, we saw distant blue mountains across a tremendous shallow basin. We were nearly on a level with the summit of Suswa itself, nor did we again drop much below that altitude. After five or six miles we overtook the wagon outspanned. The projected all-night journey had again been frustrated by the lions. These beasts had proved so bold and menacing that finally the team had been forced to stop in sheer self-defence. However, the day was cool and overcast, so nothing was lost.

After topping the Mau we saw a few gazelle, zebra, and hartebeeste, but soon plunged into a bush country quite destitute of game. We were paralleling the highest ridge of the escarpment, and so alternated between the crossing of cañons and the travelling along broad ridges between them. In lack of other amusement for a long time I rode with the wagon. The country was very rough and rocky. Everybody was excited to the point of frenzy, except the wagon. It had a certain Dutch stolidity in its manner of calmly and bumpily surmounting such portions of the landscape as happened in its way.

After a very long, tiresome march we camped above a little stream. Barring our lucky rain this would have been the first water since leaving the Kedong River. Here were hundreds of big blue pigeons swooping in to their evening drink.

For two days more we repeated this sort of travel, but always with good camps at fair-sized streams. Gradually we slanted away from the main ridge, though we still continued cross-cutting the swells and ravines thrown off its flanks. Only the ravines hour by hour became shallower, and the swells lower and broader. On their tops the scrub sometimes gave way to openings of short grass. On these fed a few gazelle of both sorts, and an occasional zebra or so. We saw also four topi, a beast about the size of our wapiti, built on the general specifications of a hartebeeste, but with the most beautiful iridescent plum-coloured coat. This quartette was very wild. I made three separate stalks on them, but the best I could do was 360 paces, at which range I missed.

Finally we surmounted the last low swell to look down a wide and sloping plain to the depression in which flowed the principal river of these parts, the Southern Guaso Nyero. Beyond it stretched the immense oceanlike plains of the Loieta, from which here and there rose isolated hills, very distant, like lonesome ships at sea. A little to the left, also very distant, we could make out an unbroken blue range of mountains. These were our ultimate destination.

XXXVII.

THE SOUTHERN GUASO NYERO.

The Southern Guaso Nyero, unlike its northern namesake, is a sluggish, muddy stream, rather small, flowing between abrupt clay banks. Farther down it drops into great cañons and eroded abysses, and acquires a certain grandeur. But here, at the ford of Agate's Drift, it is decidedly unimpressive. Scant greenery ornaments its banks. In fact, at most places they run hard and baked to a sheer drop-off of ten or fifteen feet. Scattered mimosa trees and aloes mark its course. The earth for a mile or so is trampled by thousands of Masai cattle that at certain seasons pass through the funnel of this, the only ford for miles. Apparently insignificant, it is given to sudden, tremendous rises. These originate in the rainfalls of the upper Mau Escarpment, many miles away. It behooves the safari to cross promptly if it can, and to camp always on the farther bank.

This we did, pitching our tents in a little opening, between clumps of pretty flowering aloes and the mimosas. Here, as everywhere in this country, until we had passed the barrier of the Narossara mountains, the common horseflies were a plague. They follow the Masai cattle. I can give you no better idea of their numbers than to tell you two isolated facts: I killed twenty-one at one blow; and in the morning, before sunrise, the apex of our tent held a solid black mass of the creatures running the length of the ridge pole, and from half an inch to two inches deep! Every pack was black with them on the march, and the wagon carried its millions. When the shadow of a branch would cross that slowly lumbering vehicle, the swarm would rise and bumble around distractedly for a moment before settling down again. They fairly made a nimbus of darkness.

After we had made camp we saw a number of Masai warriors hovering about the opposite bank, but they did not venture across. Some of their women did, however, and came cheerily into camp. These most interesting people are worth more than a casual word, so I shall reserve my observations on them until a later chapter. One of our porters, a big Baganda named Sabakaki, was suffering severely from pains in the chest that subsequently developed into pleurisy. From the Masai women we tried to buy some of the milk they carried in gourds; at first they seemed not averse, but as soon as they realized the milk was not for our own consumption, they turned their backs on poor Sabakaki and refused to have anything more to do with us.

These Masai are very difficult to trade with. Their only willing barter is done in sheep. These they seem to consider legitimate objects of commerce. A short distance from our camp stood three whitewashed round houses with thatched, conical roofs, the property of a trader named Agate. He was away at the time of our visit.

After an early morning, but vain, attempt to get Billy a shot at a lion we set out for our distant blue mountains. The day was a journey over plains of great variegation. At times they were covered with thin scrub; at others with small groves; or again, they were open and grassy. Always they undulated gently, so from their tops one never saw as far as he thought he was going to see. As landmark we steered by a good-sized butte named Donga Rasha.

Memba Sasa and I marched ahead on foot. In this thin scrub we got glimpses of many beasts. At one time we were within fifty yards of a band of magnificent eland. By fleeting glimpses we saw also many wildebeeste and zebra, with occasionally one of the smaller grass antelope. Finally, in an open glade we caught sight of something tawny showing in the middle of a bush. It was too high off the ground to be a buck. We sneaked nearer. At fifty yards we came to a halt, still puzzled. Judging by its height and colour, it should be a lion, but try as we would we could not make out what part of his anatomy was thus visible. At last I made up my mind to give him a shot from the Springfield, with the ·405 handy. At the shot the tawny patch heaved and lay still. We manoeuvred cautiously, and found we had killed stone dead not a lion, but a Bohur reed-buck lying atop an ant hill concealed in the middle of the bush. This accounted for its height above the ground. As it happened, I very much wanted one of these animals as a specimen, so everybody was satisfied.

Shortly after, attracted by a great concourse of carrion birds, both on trees and in the air, we penetrated a thicket to come upon a full-grown giraffe killed by lions. The claw marks and other indications were indubitable. The carcass had been partly eaten, but was rapidly vanishing under the attacks of the birds.

Just before noon we passed Donga Rasha and emerged on the open plains. Here I caught sight of some Roberts' gazelle, a new species to me, and started alone in pursuit. They, as usual, trotted over the nearest rise, so with due precautions I followed after. At the top of that rise I lay still in astonishment. Before me marched solemnly an unbroken single file of game, reaching literally to my limit of vision in both directions. They came over the land swell a mile to my left, and they were disappearing over another land swell a mile and a half to my right. It was rigidly single file, except for the young; the nose of one beast fairly touching the tail of the one ahead, and it plodded along at a businesslike walk. There were but three species represented--the gnu, the zebra, and the hartebeeste. I did not see the head of the procession, for it had gone from sight before I arrived; nor did I ever see the tail of it either, for the safari appearing inopportunely broke its continuance. But I saw two miles and a half, solid, of big game. It was a great and formal trek, probably to new pastures.

Then I turned my attention to the Roberts' gazelle, and my good luck downed a specimen at 273 yards. This, with the Bohur reed-buck, made the second new species for the day. Our luck was not yet over, however. We had proceeded but a few miles when Kongoni discovered a herd of topi. The safari immediately lay down, while I went ahead. There was little cover, and I had a very hard time to get within range, especially as a dozen zebras kept grazing across the line of my stalks. The topi themselves were very uneasy, crossing and recrossing and looking doubtfully in my direction. I had a number of chances at small bucks, but refused them in my desire to get a shot at the big leader of the herd. Finally he separated from the rest and faced in my direction at just 268 yards. At the shot he fell dead.

For the first time we had an opportunity to admire the wonderful pelt. It is beautiful in quality, plum colour, with iridescent lights and wavy "water marks" changing to pearl colour on the four quarters, with black legs. We were both struck with the gorgeousness of a topi motor-rug made of three skins, with these pearl spots as accents in the corners. To our ambitions and hopes we added more topi.

Our journey to the Narossara River lasted three days in all. We gained an outlying spur of the blue mountains, and skirted their base. The usual varied foothill country led us through defiles, over ridges, and by charming groves. We began to see Masai cattle in great herds. The gentle humpbacked beasts were held in close formation by herders afoot, tall, lithe young savages with spears. In the distance and through the heat haze the beasts shimmered strangely, their glossy reds and whites and blacks blending together. In this country of wide expanses and clear air we could thus often make out a very far-off herd simply as a speck of rich colour against the boundless rolling plains.

Here we saw a good variety of game. Zebras, of course, and hartebeeste; the Roberts' gazelle, a few topi, a good many of the gnu or wildebeeste discovered and named by Roosevelt; a few giraffes, klipspringer on the rocky buttes, cheetah, and the usual jackals, hyenas, etc. I killed one very old zebra. So ancient was he that his teeth had worn down to the level of the gums, which seemed fairly on the point of closing over. Nevertheless he was still fat and sleek. He could not much longer have continued to crop the grass. Such extreme age in wild animals is, in Africa at least, most remarkable, for generally they meet violent deaths while still in their prime.

About three o'clock of the third afternoon we came in sight of a long line of forest trees running down parallel with the nearest mountain ranges. These marked the course of the Narossara, and by four o'clock we were descending the last slope.

FOOTNOTES:

See "The Land of Footprints."

XXXVIII.

THE LOWER BENCHES.

The Narossara is really only about creek size, but as it flows the whole year round it merits the title of river. It rises in the junction of a long spur with the main ranges, cuts straight across a wide inward bend of the mountains, joins them again, plunges down a deep and tremendous cañon to the level of a second bench below great cliffs, meanders peacefully in flowery meadows and delightful glades for some miles, and then once more, and most unexpectedly, drops eighteen hundred feet by waterfall and precipitous cascade to join the Southern Guaso Nyero. The country around this junction is some of the roughest I saw in Africa.

We camped at the spot where the river ran at about its maximum distance from the mountains. Our tents were pitched beneath the shade of tall and refreshing trees.

A number of Masai women visited us, laughing and joking with Billy in their quizzically humorous fashion. Just as we were sitting down at table an Englishman wandered out of the greenery and approached. He was a small man with a tremendous red beard, wore loose garments and tennis shoes, and strolled up, his hands in his pockets and smoking a cigarette. This was V., a man of whom we had heard. A member of a historical family, officer in a crack English regiment, he had resigned everything to come into this wild country. Here he had built a boma, or enclosed compound, and engaged himself in acquiring Masai sheep in exchange for beads, wire, and cloth. Obviously the profits of such transactions could not be the temptation. He liked the life, and he liked his position of influence with these proud and savage people. Strangely enough, he cared little for the sporting possibilities of the country, though of course he did a little occasional shooting; but was quite content with his trading, his growing knowledge of and intimacy with the Masai, and his occasional tremendous journeys. To the casual and infrequent stranger his attitude was reported most uncertain.

We invited him to tea, which he accepted, and we fell into conversation. He and C. were already old acquaintances. The man, I found, was shy about talking of the things that interested him; but as they most decidedly interested us also we managed to convey an impression of our sincerity. Thereafter he was most friendly. His helpfulness, kindness, and courtesy could not have been bettered. He lent us his own boy as guide down through the cañons of the Narossara to the Lower Benches, where we hoped to find kudu; he offered store-room to such of our supplies as we intended holding in reserve; he sent us sheep and eggs as a welcome variety to our game diet; and in addition he gave us Masai implements and ornaments we could not possibly have acquired in any other way. It is impossible to buy the personal belongings of this proud and independent people at any price. The price of a spear ordinarily runs about two rupees' worth, when one trades with any other tribe. I know of a case where a Masai was offered fifty rupees for his weapon, but refused scornfully. V. acquired these things through friendship; and after we had gained his, he was most generous with them. Thus he presented us with a thing almost impossible to get and seen rarely outside of museums--the Masai war bonnet, made of the mane of a lion. It is in shape and appearance, though not in colour, almost exactly like the grenadier's shako of the last century. In addition to this priceless trophy, V. also gave us samples of the cattle bells, both wooden and metal, ivory ear ornaments, bead bracelets, steel collars, circumcision knives, sword belts, and other affairs of like value. But I think that the apogée of his kindliness was reached when much later he heard from the native tribes that we were engaged in penetrating the defiles of the higher mountains. Then he sent after us a swift Masai runner bearing to us a bottle of whisky and a message to the effect that V. was afraid we would find it very cold up there! Think of what that meant; turn it well over in your mind, with all the circumstances of distance from supplies, difficulty of transportation and all! We none of us used whisky in the tropics, so we later returned it with a suitable explanation and thanks as being too good to waste.

Next morning, under guidance of our friend's boy, we set out for the Lower Benches, leaving N'gombe Brown and his outfit to camp indefinitely until we needed him for the return journey.

The whole lie of the land hereabout is, roughly speaking, in a series of shelves. Behind us were the high mountains--the Fourth Bench; we had been travelling on the plateau of the Loieta--the Third Bench; now we were to penetrate some apparently low hills down an unexpected thousand feet to the Second Bench. This was smaller, perhaps only five miles at its widest. Its outer rim consisted also of low hills concealing a drop of precipitous cliffs. There were no passes nor cañons here--the streams dropped over in waterfalls--and precarious game trails offered the only chance for descent. The First Bench was a mere ledge, a mile or so wide. From it one looked down into the deep gorge of the Southern Guaso Nyero, and across to a tangle of eroded mountains and malpais that filled the eye. Only far off in an incredible distance were other blue mountains that marked the other side of the great Rift Valley.

Our present task was to drop from the Third Bench to the Second. For some distance we followed the Narossara; then, when it began to drop into its tremendous gorge, we continued along the hillsides above it until, by means of various "hogs' backs" and tributary cañons, we were able to regain its level far below. The going was rough and stony, and hard on the porters, but the scenery was very wild and fine. We met the river bottom again in the pleasantest oval meadow with fine big trees. The mountains quite surrounded us, towering imminent above our heads. Ahead of us the stream broke through between portals that rose the full height of the ranges. We followed it, and found ourselves on the Second Bench.

Here was grass, high grass in which the boys were almost lost to sight. Behind us the ramparts rose sheer and high, and over across the way were some low fifty-foot cliffs that marked a plateau land. Between the plateau and the ranges from which we had descended was a sort of slight flat valley through which meandered the forest trees that marked the stream.

We turned to the right and marched an hour. The river gradually approached the plateau, thus leaving between it and the ramparts a considerable plain, and some low foothills. These latter were reported to be one of the feeding grounds of the greater kudu.

We made a most delightful camp at the edge of great trees by the stream. The water flowed at the bottom of a little ravine, precipitous in most places, but with gently sloping banks at the spot we had chosen. It flowed rapidly over clean gravel, with a hurrying, tinkling sound. A broad gravel beach was spread on the hither side of it, like a spacious secret room in the jungle. Here too was a clear little slope on which to sit, with the thicket all about, the clean, swift little stream below, the high forest arches above, and the inquisitive smaller creatures hovering near. Others had been here before us, the wild things, taking advantage of the easy descent to drinking water--eland, buffalo, leopard, and small bucks. The air was almost cloyingly sweet with a perfume like sage-brush honey.

Our first task was to set our boys to work clearing a space; the grass was so high and rank that mere trampling had little effect on it. The Baganda, Sabakaki, we had been compelled to leave with the ox team. So our twenty-seven had become twenty-six.

Next morning C. and I started out very early with one gunbearer. The direction of the wind compelled us to a two hours' walk before we could begin to hunt. The high grass was soaked with a very heavy dew, and shortly we were as wet as though we had fallen into the river. A number of hornbills and parrots followed us for some distance, but soon left us in peace. We saw the Roberts' gazelle and some hartebeeste.

When we had gained a point of vantage, we turned back and began to work slowly along the base of the mountains. We kept on a general level a hundred feet or so up their slope, just high enough to give us a point of overlook for anything that might stir either in the flat plateau foothills or the plains. We also kept a sharp lookout for signs.

We had proceeded in this manner for an hour when in an opening between two bushes below us, and perhaps five hundred yards away, we saw a leopard standing like a statue, head up, a most beautiful spectacle. While we watched her through the glasses, she suddenly dropped flat out of sight. The cause we discovered to be three hartebeeste strolling sociably along, stopping occasionally to snatch a mouthful, but headed always in the direction of the bushes behind which lay the great cat. Much interested, we watched them. They disappeared behind the screen. A sudden flash marked the leopard's spring. Two badly demoralized hartebeeste stamped out into the open and away; two only. The kill had been made.

We had only the one rifle with us, for we were supposed to be out after kudu only, and were travelling as light as possible. No doubt the Springfield would kill a leopard, if the bullet landed in the right place. We discussed the matter. It ended, of course, in our sneaking down there; I with the Springfield, and C. with his knife unsheathed. Our precautions and trepidations were wasted. The leopard had carried the hartebeeste bodily some distance, had thrust it under a bush, and had departed. C. surmised it would return towards evening.

Therefore we continued after kudu. We found old signs, proving that the beasts visited this country, but nothing fresh. We saw, however, the first sing-sing, some impalla, some klipspringer, and Chanler's reed-buck.

At evening we made a crafty stalk atop the mesa-like foothills to a point overlooking the leopard's kill. We lay here looking the place over inch by inch through our glasses, when an ejaculation of disgust from Kongoni called our attention. There at another spot that confounded beast sat like a house cat watching us cynically. Either we had come too soon, or she had heard us and retired to what she considered a safe distance. There was of course no chance of getting nearer; so I sat down, for a steadier hold, and tried her anyway. At the shot she leaped high in the air, rolled over once, then recovered her feet and streaked off at full speed. Just before disappearing over a slight rise, she stopped to look back. I tried her again. We concluded this shot a miss, as the distance and light were such that only sheer luck could have landed the bullet. However, that luck was with us. Later developments showed that both shots had hit. One cut a foreleg, but without breaking a bone, and the other had hit the paunch. One was at 380 paces and the other at 490.

We found blood on the trail, and followed it a hundred yards and over a small ridge to a wide patch of high grass. It was now dark, the grass was very high, and the animal probably desperate. The situation did not look good to us, badly armed as we were. So we returned to camp, resolved to take up the trail again in the morning.

Every man in camp turned out next day to help beat the grass. C., with the ·405, stayed to direct and protect the men; while I, with the Springfield, sat down at the head of the ravine. Soon I could hear the shrieks, rattles, shouts, and whistles of the line of men as they beat through the grass. Small grass bucks and hares bounded past me; birds came whirring by. I sat on a little ant hill spying as hard as I could in all directions. Suddenly the beaters fell to dead silence. Guessing this as a signal to me that the beast had been seen, I ran to climb a higher ant hill to the left. From there I discerned the animal plainly, sneaking along belly to earth, exactly in the manner of a cat after a sparrow. It was not a woods-leopard, but the plains-leopard, or cheetah, supposed to be a comparatively harmless beast.

At my shot she gave one spring forward and rolled over into the grass. The nearest porters yelled, and rushed in. I ran, too, as fast as I could, but was not able to make myself heard above the row. An instant later the beast came to its feet with a savage growl and charged the nearest of the men. She was crippled, and could not move as quickly as usual, but could hobble along faster than her intended victim could run. This was a tall and very conceited Kavirondo. He fled, but ran around in circles in and out of his excited companions. The cheetah followed him, and him only, with most single-minded purpose.

I dared not shoot while men were in the line of fire even on the other side of the cheetah, for I knew the high-power bullet would at that range go right on through, and I fairly split my throat trying to clear the way. It seemed five minutes, though it was probably only as many seconds, before I got my chance. It was high time. The cheetah had reared to strike the man down. My shot bowled her over. She jumped to her feet again, made another dash at the thoroughly scared Kavirondo, and I killed her just at his coat-tails.

The cheetahs ordinarily are supposed to be cowards, although their size and power are equal to that of other leopards. Nobody is afraid of them. Yet this particular animal charged with all the ferocity and determination of the lion, and would certainly have killed or badly mauled my man. To be sure it had been wounded, and had had all night to think about it.

In the relief from the tension we all burst into shrieks of laughter; all except the near-victim of the scrimmage, who managed only a sickly smile. Our mirth was short. Out from a thicket over a hundred yards away walked one of the men, who had been in no way involved in the fight, calmly announcing that he had been shot. We were sceptical, but he turned his back and showed us the bullet hole at the lower edge of the ribs. One of my bullets, after passing through the cheetah, had ricocheted and picked this poor fellow out from the whole of an empty landscape. And this after I had delayed my rescue fairly to the point of danger in order to avoid all chance of hurting some one!

We had no means of telling how deeply the bullet had penetrated; so we reassured the man, and detailed two men to assist him back to camp by easy stages. He did not seem to be suffering much pain, and he had lost little strength.

At camp, however, we found that the wound was deep. C. generously offered to make a forced march in order to get the boy out to a hospital. By hitting directly across the rough country below the benches it was possible to shorten the journey somewhat, provided V. could persuade the Masai to furnish a guide. The country was a desert, and the water scarce. We lined up our remaining twenty-six men and selected the twelve best and strongest. These we offered a month and a half's extra wages for the trip. We then made a hammock out of one of the ground cloths, and the same afternoon C. started. I sent with him four of my own men as far as the ox-wagon for the purpose of bringing back more supplies. They returned the next afternoon bringing also a report from C. that all was well so far, and that he had seen a lion. He made the desert trip without other casualty than the lost of his riding mule, and landed the wounded man in the hospital all right. In spite of C.'s expert care on the journey out, and the best of treatment later, the boy, to my great distress, died eleven days after reaching the hospital. C. was gone just two weeks.

In the meantime I sent out my best trackers in all directions to look for kudu signs, conceiving this the best method of covering the country rapidly. In this manner I shortly determined that chances were small here, and made up my mind to move down to the edge of the bench where the Narossara makes its plunge. Before doing so, however, I hunted for and killed a very large eland bull reported by Mavrouki. This beast was not only one of the largest I ever saw, but was in especially fine coat. He stood five feet six inches high at the shoulder; was nine feet eight inches long, without the tail; and would weigh twenty-five hundred pounds. The men were delighted with this acquisition. I now had fourteen porters, the three gunbearers, the cook, and the two boys. They surrounded each tiny fire with switches full of roasting meat; they cut off great hunks for a stew; they made quantities of biltong, or jerky.

Next day I left Kongoni and one porter at the old camp, loaded my men with what they could carry, and started out. We marched a little over two hours; then found ourselves beneath a lone mimosa tree about a quarter-mile from the edge of the bench. At this point the stream drops into a little cañon preparatory to its plunge; and the plateau rises ever so gently in tremendous cliffs. I immediately dispatched the porters back for another load. A fine sing-sing lured me across the river. I did not get the sing-sing, but had a good fight with two lions, as narrated elsewhere.

In this spot we camped a number of days; did a heap of hard climbing and spying; killed another lion out of a band of eight; thoroughly determined that we had come at the wrong time for kudu, and decided on another move.

This time our journey lasted five hours, so that our relaying consumed three days. We broke back through the ramparts, by means of another pass we had discovered when looking for kudu, to the Third Bench again. Here we camped in the valley of Lengeetoto.

This valley is one of the most beautiful and secluded in this part of Africa. It is shaped like an ellipse, five or six miles long by about three miles wide, and is completely surrounded by mountains. The ramparts of the western side--those forming the walls of the Fourth Bench--rise in sheer rock cliffs, forest crowned. To the east, from which direction we had just come, were high, rounded mountains. At sunrise they cut clear in an outline of milky slate against the sky.

The floor of this ellipse was surfaced in gentle undulations, like the low swells of a summer sea. Between each swell a singing, clear-watered brook leapt and dashed or loitered through its jungle. Into the mountains ran broad upward-flung valleys of green grass; and groves of great forest trees marched down cañons and out a short distance into the plains. Everything was fresh and green and cool. We needed blankets at night, and each morning the dew was cool and sparkling, and the sky very blue. Underneath the forest trees of the stream beds and the cañon were leafy rooms as small as a closet, or great as cathedral aisles. And in the short brush dwelt rhinoceros and impalla; in the jungles were buffalo and elephant; on the plains we saw giraffe, hartebeeste, zebra, duiker; and in the bases of the hills we heard at evening and early morning the roaring of lions.

In this charming spot we lingered eight days. Memba Sasa and I spent most of our time trying to get one of the jungle-dwelling buffalo without his getting us. In this we were finally successful. Then, as it was about time for C. to return, we moved back to V.'s boma on the Narossara; relaying, as usual, the carrying of our effects. At this time I had had to lay off three more men on account of various sorts of illness, so was still more cramped for transportation facilities. As we were breaking camp a lioness leaped to her feet from where she had been lying under a bush. So near was it to camp that I had not my rifle ready. She must have been lying there within two hundred yards of our tents, watching all our activities.

We drew into V.'s boma a little after two o'clock. The man in charge of our tent did not put in an appearance until next day. Fortunately V. had an extra tent, which he lent us. We camped near the river, just outside the edge of the river forest. The big trees sent their branches out over us very far above, while a winding path led us to the banks of the river where was a dingle like an inner room. After dark we sat with V. at our little camp fire. It was all very beautiful--the skyful of tropical stars, the silhouette of the forest shutting them out, the velvet blackness of the jungle flickering with fireflies, the purer outlines of the hilltops and distant mountains to the left, the porters' tiny fires before the little white tents; and in the distance, from the direction of V.'s boma, the irregular throb of the dance drum and the occasional snatch of barbaric singing borne down on the night wind from where his Wakambas were holding an n'goma. A pair of ibis that had been ejected when we made camp contributed intermittent outraged and raucous squawks from the tiptop of some neighbouring tree.

FOOTNOTES:

This is an interesting fact--that she reared to strike instead of springing.

It must be remembered that this beast had the evening before killed a 350-pound hartebeeste with ease.

"The Land of Footprints."

"The Land of Footprints."

XXXIX.

NOTES ON THE MASAI.

It is in no way my intention to attempt a comprehensive description of this unique people. My personal observation is, of course, inadequate to that task, and the numerous careful works on the subject are available to the interested reader.

The southern branch of the race, among whom we were now travelling, are very fine physically. Men close to seven feet in height are not at all uncommon, and the average is well above six. They are strongly and lithely made. Their skins are a red-brown or bronze, generally brought to a high state of polish by liberal anointing. In feature they resemble more the Egyptian or Abyssinian than the negro cast of countenance. The women are tall and well formed, with proud, quaintly quizzical faces. Their expressions and demeanour seem to indicate more independence and initiative than is usual with most savage women, but whether this is actually so or not I cannot say.

On this imposing and pleasing physical foundation your true Masai is content to build a very slight superstructure of ornament. His ear-lobes are always stretched to hang down in long loops, in which small medals, ornaments, decorated blocks of wood, or the like, are inserted. Long, heavy ovals of ivory, grooved to accommodate the flesh loop, very finely etched in decorative designs, are occasionally worn as "stretchers." Around the neck is a slender iron collar, and on the arms are one or two glittering bracelets. The sword belt is of leather heavily beaded, with a short dangling fringe of steel beads. Through this the short blade is thrust. When in full dress the warrior further sports a hollow iron knee bell, connected with the belt by a string of cowrie shells or beads. Often is added a curious triangular strip of skin fitting over the chest, and reaching about to the waist. A robe or short cloak of short-haired sheepskin is sometimes carried for warmth, but not at all for modesty. The weapons are a long, narrow-bladed heavy spear, the buffalo hide shield, the short sword, and the war club or rungs. The women are always shaven-headed, wear voluminous robes of soft leather, and carry a great weight of heavy wire wound into anklets and stockings, and brought to a high state of polish. So extensive are these decorations that they really form a sort of armour, with breaks only for the elbow and the knee joints. The married women wear also a great outstanding collar.

The Masai are pastoral, and keep immense herds and flocks. Therefore they inhabit the grazing countries, and are nomadic. Their villages are invariably arranged in a wide circle, the low huts of mud and wattles facing inwards. The spaces between the huts are filled in with thick dense thorn brush, thus enclosing a strong corral, or boma. These villages are called manyattas. They are built by the women in an incredibly brief space of time. Indeed, an overchief stopping two days at one place has been known to cause the construction of a complete village, to serve only for that period. He then moved on, and the manyatta was never used again! Nevertheless these low rounded huts, in shape like a loaf of bread, give a fictitious impression of great strength and permanency. The smooth and hardened mud resembles masonry or concrete work. As a matter of fact it is the thinnest sort of a shell over plaited withies. The single entrance to this compound may be closed by thorn bush, so that at night, when the lions are abroad, the Masai and all his herds dwell quite peaceably and safely inside the boma. Twelve to twenty huts constitute a village.

When the grass is fed down, the village moves to a new location. There is some regulation about this, determined by the overchiefs, so that one village does not interfere with another. Beside the few articles of value or of domestic use, the only things carried away from an old village are the strongly-woven shield-shaped doors. These are strapped along the flanks of the donkeys, while the other goods rest between. A donkey pack, Masai fashion, is a marvellous affair that would not stay on ten minutes for a white man.

The Masai perform no agriculture whatever, nor will they eat game meat. They have no desire whatever for any of the white man's provisions except sugar. In fact; their sole habitual diet is mixed cow's blood and milk--no fruits, no vegetables, no grains, rarely flesh; a striking commentary on extreme vegetarian claims. The blood they obtain by shooting a very sharp-pointed arrow into the neck vein of the cow. After the requisite amount has been drained, the wound is closed and the animal turned into the herd to recuperate. The blood and milk are then shaken together in long gourds. Certainly the race seems to thrive on this strange diet. Only rarely, on ceremonial occasions or when transportation is difficult, do they eat mutton or goat flesh, but never beef.

Of labour, then, about a Masai village, it follows that there is practically none. The women build the manyattas; there is no cooking, no tilling of the soil, no searching for wild fruits. The herd have to be watched by day, and driven in at the fall of night; that is the task of the boys and the youths who have not gone through with the quadriennial circumcision ceremonies and become El-morani, or warriors. Therefore the grown men are absolutely and completely gentlemen of leisure. In civilization, the less men do the more important they are inclined to think themselves. It is so here. Socially the Masai consider themselves several cuts above anybody else in the country. As social superiority lies mostly in thinking so hard enough--so that the inner belief expresses itself in the outward attitude and manner--the Masai carry it off. Their haughtiness is magnificent. Also they can look as unsmiling and bored as anybody anywhere. Consequently they are either greatly admired, or greatly hated and feared, as the case happens to be, by all the other tribes. The Kikuyu young men frankly ape the customs and ornaments of their powerful neighbours. Even the British Government treats them very gingerly indeed, and allows these economically useless savages a latitude the more agricultural tribes do not enjoy. Yet I submit that any people whose property is in immense herds can more easily be brought to terms than those who have nothing so valuable to lose.

As a matter of fact the white man and the Masai have never had it out. When the English, a few years since, were engaged in opening the country they carried on quite a stoutly contested little war with the Wakamba. These people put up so good a fight that the English anticipated a most bitter struggle with the Masai, whose territory lay next beyond. To their surprise the Masai made peace.

"We have watched the war with the Wakamba," they said, in effect, "and we have seen the Wakamba kill a great many of your men. But more of your men came in always, and there were no more Wakamba to come in and take the places of those who were killed. We are not afraid. If we should war with you, we would undoubtedly kill a great many of you, and you would undoubtedly kill a great many of us. But there can be no use in that. We want the ranges for our cattle; you want a road. Let us then agree."

The result is that to-day the Masai look upon themselves as an unconquered people, and bear themselves--towards the other tribes--accordingly. The shrewd common sense and observation evidenced above must have convinced them that war now would be hopeless.

This acute intelligence is not at all incompatible with the rather bigoted and narrow outlook on life inevitable to a people whose ideals are made up of fancied superiorities over the rest of mankind. Witness, the feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages.

With this type the underlying theory of masculine activity is the military. Some outlet for energy was needed, and in war it was found. Even the ordinary necessities of primitive agriculture and of the chase were lacking. The Masai ate neither vegetable, grain, nor wild game. His whole young manhood, then, could be spent in no better occupation than the pursuit of warlike glory--and cows.

On this rested the peculiar social structure of the people. In perusing the following fragmentary account the reader must first of all divest his mind of what he would, according to white man's standards, consider moral or immoral. Such things must be viewed from the standpoint of the people believing in them. The Masai are moral in the sense that they very rigorously live up to their own customs and creeds. Their women are strictly chaste in the sense that they conduct no affairs outside those permitted within the tribe. No doubt, from the Masai point of view, we are ourselves immoral.

The small boy, as soon as he is big enough to be responsible--and that is very early in life--is given, in company with others, charge of a flock of sheep. Thence he graduates to the precious herds of cows. He wears little or nothing; is armed with a throwing club (a long stick), or perhaps later a broad-bladed, short-headed spear of a pattern peculiar to boys and young men. His life is thus over the free open hills and veld until, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, the year of the circumcision comes. Then he enters on the long ceremonies that initiate him into the warrior class. My knowledge of the details of this subject is limited; for while I had the luck to be in Masailand on the fourth year, such things are not exhibited freely. The curious reader can find more on the subject in other books; but as this is confined to personal experiences I will tell only what I have myself elicited.

The youth's shaved head is allowed to grow its hair. He hangs around his brow a dangling string of bright-coloured bird skins stuffed out in the shape of little cylinders, so that at a short distance they look like curls. For something like a month of probation he wears these, then undergoes the rite. For ten days thereafter he and his companions, their heads daubed with clay and ashes, clad in long black robes, live out in the brush. They have no provision, but are privileged to steal what they need. At the end of the ten days they return to the manyattas. A three-day n'goma, or dance, now completes their transformation to the El-morani class. It finishes by an obscene night dance, in the course of which the new warriors select their partners.

For ten or twelve years these young men are El-morani. They dwell in a separate manyatta. With them dwell promiscuously all the young unmarried women of the tribe. There is no permanent pairing off, no individual property, no marriage. Nor does this constitute flagrant immorality, difficult as it may be for us to see that fact. The institution, like all national institutions, must have had its origin in a very real need and a very practical expediency. The fighting strength of the tribe must be kept up, and by the young and vigorous stock. On the other hand, every man of military age must be foot free to serve in the constant wars and forays. This institution is the means. And, mind you, unchastity in the form of illicit intercourse outside the manyatta of the El-morani, whether with her own or another tribe, subjects the women to instant death.

The El-morani in full fighting rig are imposing. They are, as I have explained, tall and of fine physique. The cherished and prized weapon is the long, narrow-bladed spear. This is five and six feet long, with a blade over three feet by as many inches, and with a long iron shoe. In fact, only a bare hand-hold of wood is provided. It is of formidable weight, but so well balanced that a flip cast with the wrist will drive it clear through an enemy. A short sword and a heavy-headed war club complete the offensive weapons. The shield is of buffalo hide, oval in shape, and decorated with a genuine heraldry, based on genealogy. A circlet of black ostrich feathers in some branches surrounds the face and stands high above the head. In the southern districts the warriors wear two single black ostrich plumes tied one either side the head, and slanting a little backwards. They walk with a mincing step, so that the two feathers bob gently up and down like the waving of the circus equestrienne's filmy skirts.

Naturally the Masai with the Zulu were the most dreaded of all the tribes of Africa. They were constantly raiding in all directions as far as their sphere of operations could reach, capturing cattle and women as the prizes of war. Now that the white man has put a stop to the ferocious intertribal wars, the El-morani are out of a job. The military organization is still carried on as before. What will happen to the morals of the people it would be difficult to say. The twelve years of imposed peace have not been long enough seriously to deteriorate the people; but, inevitably, complete idleness will tell. Either the people must change their ideals and become industrious--which is extremely unlikely--or they will degenerate.

As a passing thought, it is a curious and formidable fact that the prohibition of intertribal wars and forays all through East Central Africa had already permitted the population to increase to a point of discomfort. Many of the districts are becoming so crowded as to overflow. What will happen in the long run only time can tell--famines are weakening things, while war at least hardens a nation's fibre. This is not necessarily an argument for war. Only everywhere in the world the white man seems, with the best of intentions, to be upsetting natural balances without substituting anything for them. We are better at preventing things than causing them.

At the age of thirty, or thereabout, the El-morani becomes an Elder. He may now drink and smoke, vices that in the Spartan days of his military service were rigorously denied him. He may also take a wife or wives, according to his means, and keep herds of cattle. His wives he purchases from their parents, the usual medium of payment being cows or sheep. The young women who have been living in the El-morani village are considered quite as desirable as the young virgins. If there are children, these are taken over by the husband. They are considered rather a recommendation than a detriment, for they prove the girl is fruitful.

Relieved of all responsibility, the ex-warrior now has full leisure to be a gentleman. He drinks a fermented liquor made from milk; he takes snuff or smokes the rank native tobacco; he conducts interminable diplomatic negotiations; he oversees minutely the forms of ceremonials; he helps to shape the policies of his manyatta, and he gives his attention to the accumulation of cows.

The cow is the one thing that arouses the Masai's full energies. He will undertake any journey, any task, any danger, provided the reward therefor is horned cattle. And a cow is the one thing he will on no account trade, sell, destroy. A very few of them he milks, and a very few of them he periodically bleeds; but the majority, to the numbers of thousands upon thousands, live uselessly until they die of old age. They are branded, generally on the flanks or ribs, with strange large brands, and are so constantly handled that they are tamer and more gentle than sheep. I have seen upwards of a thousand head in sole charge of two old women on foot. These ancient dames drove the beasts in a long file to water, then turned them quite easily and drove them back again. Opposite our camp they halted their charges and came to make us a long visit. The cattle stood in their tracks until the call was over; not one offered even to stray off the baked earth in search of grasses.

The Masai cattle king knows his property individually. Each beast has its name. Some of the wealthier are worth in cattle, at settler's prices, close to a hundred thousand dollars. They are men of importance in their own council huts, but they lack many things dear to the savage heart simply because they are unwilling to part with a single head of stock in order to procure them.

In the old days forays and raids tended more or less to keep the stock down. Since the White Man's Peace the herds are increasing. In the country between the Mau Escarpment and the Narossara Mountains we found the feed eaten down to the earth two months before the next rainy season. In the meantime the few settlers are hard put to it to buy cattle at any price wherewith to stock their new farms. The situation is an anomaly which probably cannot continue. Some check will have eventually to be devised, either limiting the cattle, or compelling an equitable sale of the surplus. Certainly the present situation represents a sad economic waste--of the energies of a fine race destined to rust away, and of the lives of tens of thousands of valuable beasts brought into existence only to die of old age. If these matchless herders and cattle breeders could be brought into relation with the world's markets everybody would be the better.

Besides his sacred cattle the Masai raises also lesser herds of the hairy sheep of the country. These he used for himself only on the rare occasions of solitary forced marches away from his herds, or at the times of ceremony. Their real use is as a trading medium--for more cattle! Certain white men and Somalis conduct regular trading expeditions into Masailand, bringing in small herds of cows bought with trade goods from the other tribes. These they barter with the Masai for sheep. In Masai estimation a cow is the most valuable thing on earth, while a sheep is only a medium of exchange. With such notions it is easy to see that the white man can make an advantageous exchange, in spite of the Masai's well-known shrewdness at a bargain. Each side is satisfied. There remains only to find a market for the sheep--an easy matter. A small herd of cows will, in the long run, bring quite a decent profit.

The Masai has very little use for white man's products. He will trade for squares of cloth, beads of certain kinds and in a limited quantity, brass and iron wire of heavy gauge, blankets and sugar. That, barring occasional personal idiosyncrasy, is about all. For these things he will pay also in sheep. Masai curios are particularly difficult to get hold of. I rather like them for their independence in that respect. I certainly should refuse to sell my tennis shoes from my feet merely because some casual Chinaman happened to admire them!

The women seem to occupy a position quite satisfactory to themselves. To be sure they do the work; but there is not much work! They appear to be well treated; at least they are always in good spirits, laughing and joking with each other, and always ready with quick repartee to remarks flung at them by the safari boys. They visited camp freely, and would sit down for a good lively afternoon of joking. Their expressions were quizzical, with a shy intelligent humour. In spite of the apparent unabashed freedom of their deportment they always behaved with the utmost circumspection; nor did our boys ever attempt any familiarity. The unobtrusive lounging presence in the background of two warriors with long spears may have had something to do with this.

The Masai government is centred in an overlord or king. His orders seemed to be implicitly obeyed. The present king I do not know, as the old king, Lenani, had just died at an advanced age. In former days the traveller on entering Masailand was met by a sub-chief. This man planted his long spear upright in the ground, and the intending traveller flung over it coils of the heavy wire. A very generous traveller who completely covered the spear then had no more trouble. One less lavish was likely to be held up for further impositions as he penetrated the country. This tax was called the honga.

The Masai language is one of the most difficult of all the native tongues. In fact, the white man is almost completely unable even to pronounce many of the words. V., who is a "Masai-man," who knows them intimately, and who possesses their confidence, does not pretend to talk with them in their own tongue, but employs the universal Swahili.

XL.

THROUGH THE ENCHANTED FOREST.

We delayed at V.'s boma three days, waiting for C. to turn up. He maintained a little force of Wakamba, as the Masai would not take service. The Wakamba are a hunting tribe, using both the spear and the poisoned arrow to kill their game. Their bows are short and powerful, and the arrows exceedingly well fashioned. The poison is made from the wood of a certain fat tree, with fruit like gigantic bologna sausages. It is cut fine, boiled, and the product evaporated away until only a black sticky substance remains. Into this the point of the arrow is dipped; and the head is then protected until required by a narrow strip of buckskin wound around and around it. I have never witnessed the effects of this poison; but V. told me he had seen an eland die in twenty-two minutes from so slight a wound in the shoulder that it ran barely a hundred yards before stopping. The poison more or less loses its efficiency, however, after the sticky, tarlike substance has dried out.

I offered a half-rupee as a prize for an archery competition, for I was curious to get a view of their marksmanship. The bull's-eye was a piece of typewriter paper at thirty paces. This they managed to puncture only once out of fifteen tries, though they never missed it very widely. V. seemed quite put out at this poor showing, so I suppose they can ordinarily do better; but I imagine they are a good deal like our hunting Indians--poor shots, but very skilful at stalking close to a beast.

Our missing porter, with the tent, was brought in next afternoon by Kongoni, who had gone in search of him. The man was a big, strong Kavirondo. He was sullen, and merely explained that he was "tired." This excuse for a five hours' march after eight days' rest! I fined him eight rupees, which I gave Kongoni, and ordered him twenty-five lashes. Six weeks later he did the same trick. C. allotted him fifty lashes, and had him led thereafter by a short rope around the neck. He was probably addicted to opium. This was the only man to be formally kibokoed on the whole trip--a good testimony at once to C.'s management, the discrimination we had used in picking them out, and the settled reputations we had by now acquired.

After C.'s return we prepared to penetrate straight back through the great rampart of mountains to the south and west.

We crossed the bush-grown plains, and entered a gently rising long cañon flanked on either side by towering ranges that grew higher and higher the farther we proceeded. In the very centre of the mountains, apparently, this cañon ended in a small round valley. There appeared to be no possible exit, save by the way we had come, or over the almost perpendicular ridges a thousand feet or more above. Nevertheless, we discovered a narrow ravine that slanted up into the hills to the left. Following it we found ourselves very shortly in a great forest on the side of a mountain. Hanging creepers brushed our faces, tangled vines hung across our view, strange and unexpected openings offered themselves as a means through which we could see a little closer into the heart of mystery. The air was cool and damp and dark. The occasional shafts of sunlight or glimpses of blue sky served merely to accentuate the soft gloom. Save that we climbed always, we could not tell where we were going.

The ascent occupied a little over an hour. Then through the tree trunks and undergrowth we caught the sky-line of the crest. When we topped this we took a breath, and prepared ourselves for a corresponding descent. But in a hundred yards we popped out of the forest to find ourselves on a new level. The Fourth Bench had been attained.

It was a grass country of many low, rounded hills and dipping valleys, with fine isolated oaklike trees here and there in the depressions, and compact, beautiful oaklike groves thrown over the hills like blankets. Well-kept, green, trim, intimate, it should have had church spires and gray roofs in appropriate spots. It was a refreshment to the eye after the great and austere spaces among which we had been dwelling, repose to the spirit after the alert and dangerous lands. The dark-curtained forest seemed, fancifully, an enchantment through which we had gained to this remote smiling land, nearest of all to the blue sky.

We continued south for two days; and then, as the narrative will show, were forced to return. We found it always the same type; pleasant sleepy little valleys winding around and between low hills crowned with soft groves and forests. It was for all the world like northern Surrey, or like some of the live oak country of California. Only this we soon discovered: in spite of the enchantment of the magic-protecting forest, the upper benches too were subject to the spell that lies over all Africa. These apparently little valleys were in reality the matter of an hour's journey to cross; these rounded hills, to all seeming only two good golf strokes from bottom to top, were matters of serious climbing; these compact, squared groves of oaklike trees were actually great forests of giants in which one could lose one's self for days, in which roamed herds of elephant and buffalo. It looked compact because we could see all its constituent elements. As a matter of fact, it was neat and tidy; only we were, as usual, too small for it.

At the end of two hours' fast marching we had made the distance, say, from the clubhouse to the second hole. Then we camped in a genuinely little grove of really small trees overlooking a green valley bordered with wooded hills. The prospect was indescribably delightful; a sort of Sunday-morning landscape of groves and green grass and a feeling of church bells.

Only down the valley, diminished by distance, all afternoon Masai warriors, in twos and threes, trooped by, mincing along so that their own ostrich feathers would bob up and down, their spears held aslant.

We began to realize that we were indeed in a new country when our noon thermometer registered only 66 degrees, and when at sunrise the following morning it stood at 44 degrees. To us, after eight months under the equator, this was bitter weather!

FOOTNOTES:

Eight by ten and a half inches.

XLI.

NAIOKOTUKU.

Next morning we marched on up the beautiful valley through shoulder-high grasses wet with dew. At the end of two hours we came to the limit of Leyeye's knowledge of the country. It would now be necessary to find savage guides.

Accordingly, while we made camp, C., with Leyeye as interpreter, departed in search of a Masai village. So tall and rank grew the grass, that we had to clear it out as one would clear brushwood in order to make room for our tents.

Several hours later C. returned. He had found a very large village; but unfortunately the savages were engaged in a big n'goma which could not be interrupted by mere business. However, the chief was coming to make a friendly call. When the n'goma should be finished, he would be delighted to furnish us with anything we might desire.

Almost on the heels of this the chief arrived. He was a fine old savage, over six feet tall, of well proportioned figure, and with a shrewd, intelligent face. The n'goma had him to a limited extent, for he stumbled over tent ropes, smiled a bit uncertainly, and slumped down rather suddenly when he had meant to sit. However, he stumbled, smiled, and slumped with unassailable dignity.

From beneath his goatskin robe he produced a long ornamented gourd, from which he offered us a drink of fermented milk. He took our refusal good-naturedly. The gourd must have held a gallon, but he got away with all of its contents in the course of the interview; also several pints of super-sweetened coffee which we doled out to him a little at a time, and which he seemed to appreciate extravagantly.

Through Leyeye we exchanged the compliments of the day, and, after the African custom, told each other how important we were. Our visitor turned out to be none other than the brother of Lenani, the paramount chief of all the Masai. I forget what I was, either the brother of King George or the nephew of Theodore Roosevelt--the only two white men every native has heard of. It may be that both of us were mistaken, but from his evident authority over a very wide district we were inclined to believe our visitor.

We told him we wanted guides through the hills to the southward. He promised them in a most friendly fashion.

"I do not know the white man," said he. "I live always in these mountains. But my brother Lenani told me ten years ago that some day the white man would come into my country. My brother told me that when the white man came travelling in my country I must treat him well, for the white man is a good friend but a bad enemy. I have remembered my brother Lenani's words, though they were spoken a long time ago. The white man has been very long in coming; but now he is here. Therefore I have brought you milk to-day, and to-morrow I will send you sheep; and later I will send young men who know the hills to take you where you wish to go."

We expressed gratification, and I presented him with a Marble fish knife. The very thin blade and the ingenious manner in which the two halves of the handle folded forward over it pleased him immensely.

"No one but myself shall ever use this knife," said he.

He had no pockets, but he tucked it away in his armpit, clamped the muscles down over it, and apparently forgot it. At least he gave it no further attention, used his hands as usual, but retained it as securely as in a pocket.

"To-morrow," he promised at parting, "very early in the morning, I will send my own son and another man to guide you; and I will send a sheep for your meat."

We arose "very early," packed our few affairs, picked out four porters--and sat down to wait. Our plan was to cruise for five days with as light and mobile an outfit as possible, and then to return for fresh supplies. Billy would take charge of the main camp during our absence. As advisers, we left her Abba Ali, Memba Sasa, and Mohammed.

At noon we were still waiting. The possibility of doing a full day's journey was gone, but we thought we might at least make a start. At one o'clock, just as we had about given up hope, the Masai strolled in. They were beautiful, tall, straight youths, finely formed, with proud features and a most graceful carriage. In colour they were as though made of copper bronze, with the same glitter of high lights from their fine-textured skins. Even in this chilly climate they were nearly naked. One carried a spear, the other a bow and arrow.

Joyously we uprose--and sat down again. We had provided an excellent supply of provisions for our guides; but on looking over the lot they discovered nothing--absolutely nothing--that met their ideas.

"What do they want?" we asked Leyeye in despair.

"They say they will eat nothing but sheep," he reported.

We remembered old Naiokotuku's promise of sending us sheep, sneered cynically at the faith of savages, and grimly set forth to see what we could buy in the surrounding country. But we wronged the old man. Less than a mile from camp we met men driving in as presents not one, but two sheep. So we abandoned our shopping tour and returned to camp. By the time one of the sheep had been made into mutton it was too late to start. The Masai showed symptoms of desiring to go back to the village for the night. This did not please us. We called them up, and began extravagantly to admire their weapons, begging to examine them. Once we had them in our hands we craftily discoursed as follows:--

"These are beautiful weapons, the most beautiful we have ever seen. Since you are going so spend the night in our camp, and since we greatly fear that some of our men might steal these beautiful weapons, we will ourselves guard them for you carefully from theft until morning."

So saying, we deposited them inside the tent. Then we knew we had our Masai safe. They would never dream of leaving while the most cherished of their possessions were in hostage.

XLII.

SCOUTING IN THE ELEPHANT FOREST.

Here we were finally off at dawn. It was a very chilly, wet dawn, with the fog so thick that we could see not over ten feet ahead. We had four porters, carrying about twenty-five pounds apiece of the bare necessities, Kongoni, and Leyeye. The Masai struck confidently enough through the mist. We crossed neck-deep grass flats--where we were thoroughly soaked--climbed hills through a forest, skirted apparently for miles an immense reed swamp. As usual when travelling strange country in a fog, we experienced that queer feeling of remaining in the same spot while fragments of near-by things are slowly paraded by. When at length the sun's power cleared the mists, we found ourselves in the middle of a forest country of high hills.

Into this forest we now plunged, threading our way here and there where the animal trails would take us, looking always for fresh elephant spoor. It would have been quite impossible to have moved about in any other fashion. The timber grew on hillsides, and was very lofty and impressive; and the tropical undergrowth grew tall, rank, and impenetrable. We could proceed only by means of the kind assistance of the elephant, the buffalo, and the rhinoceros.

Elephant spoor we found, but none made later than three weeks before. The trails were broad, solid paths through the forest, as ancient and beaten as though they had been in continuous use for years. Unlike the rhino and buffalo trails, they gave us head room and to spare. The great creatures had by sheer might cut their way through the dense, tough growth, leaving twisted, splintered, wrecked jungle behind them, but no impediment.

By means of these beautiful trails we went quietly, penetrating farther and farther into the jungle. Our little procession of ten made no noise. If we should strike fresh elephant tracks, thus would we hunt them, with all our worldly goods at our backs, so that at night we could camp right on the trail.

The day passed almost without incident.

Once a wild crash and a snort told of a rhinoceros, invisible, but very close. We huddled together, our rifles ready, uncertain whether or not the animal would burst from the leafy screen at our very faces. The Masai stood side by side, the long spear poised, the bow bent, fine, tense figures in bronze.

Near sundown we found ourselves by a swift little stream in the bottom of a deep ravine. Here we left the men to make camp, and ourselves climbed a big mountain on the other side. It gave us a look abroad over a wilderness of hills, forested heavily, and a glimpse of the landfall far away where no white man had ever been. This was as far south as we were destined to get, though at the time we did not know it. Our plan was to push on two days more. Near the top of the ridge we found the unmistakable tracks of the bongo. This is interesting to zoologists in that it extends the southward range of this rare and shy beast.

Just at dark we regained our camp. It was built California fashion--for the first and last time in Africa: blankets spread on canvas under the open sky and a gipsy fire at our feet, over which I myself cooked our very simple meal. As we were smoking our pipes in sleepy content, Leyeye and the two Masai appeared for a shauri. Said the Masai,--

"We have taken you over the country we know. There are elephants there sometimes, but there are no elephants there now. We can take you farther, and if you wish us to do so, we will do so; but we know no more of the country than you do. But now if we return to the manyatta to-morrow, we can march two hours to where are some Wanderobo; and the Wanderobo know this country and will take you through it. If it pleases you, one of us will go get the Wanderobo, and the other will stay with you to show good faith."

We rolled our eyes at each other in humorous despair. Here at the very beginning of the reconnaissance we had run against the stone wall of African indirectness and procrastination. And just as we thought we had at last settled everything!

"Why," we inquired, "were not the Wanderobo sent at first, instead of yourselves?"

"Because," they replied, with truly engaging frankness, "our chief, Naiokotuku, thought that perhaps we might find elephant here in the country we know; and then we should get for ourselves all the presents you would give for finding elephant. But the elephant are not here now, so the Wanderobo will get part of the present."

That was certainly candid. After some further talk we decided there was no help for it; we must return to camp for a new start.

At this decision the Masai brightened. They volunteered to set off early with Leyeye, to push ahead of us rapidly, and to have the Wanderobo in camp by the time we reached there. We concealed somewhat cynical smiles, and agreed.

The early start was made, but when we reached camp we found, not the Wanderobo, but Leyeye and the Masai huddled over a fire. This was exasperating, but we could not say much. After all, the whole matter was no right of ours, but a manifestation of friendship on the part of Naiokotuku. In the early afternoon the sky cleared, and the ambassadors departed, promising faithfully to be back before we slept. We spent the day writing and in gazing at the vivid view of the hillside, the forest, and the distant miniature prospect before us. Finally we discovered what made it in essence so strangely familiar. In vividness and clarity--even in the crudity of its tones--it was exactly like a coloured photograph!

Of course the savages did not return that evening, nor did we really expect them. Just as a matter of form we packed up the next morning, and sat down to wait. Shortly before noon Leyeye and the Masai returned, bringing with them two of the strange, shy, forest hunters.

But by this time we had talked things over thoroughly. The lure of the greater kudu was regaining the strength it had lost by a long series of disappointments. We had not time left for both a thorough investigation of the forests and a raid in the dry hills of the west after kudu. Mavrouki said he knew of a place where that animal ranged. So we had come to a decision.

We called the Masai and Wanderobo before us. They squatted in a row, their spears planted before them. We sat in canvas chairs. Leyeye standing, translated. The affair was naturally of the greatest deliberation. In the indirect African manner we began our shauri.

We asked one simple question at a time, dealing with one simple phase of the subject. This phase we treated from several different points of view, in order to be absolutely certain that it was understood. To these questions we received replies in this manner:--

"Yes, the Wanderobo told us," they knew the forest; they knew how to go about in the forest; they understood how to find their way in the forest. They knew the elephant; they had seen the elephant many times in the forest; they knew where the elephant ranged in the forest--and so on through every piece of information we desired. It is the usual and only sure way of questioning natives.

Thus we learned that the elephant range extended south through the forests for about seven days' travel; that at this time of year the beasts might be anywhere on that range. This confirmed our decision. Then said we to Leyeye:--

"Tell the Masai that the bwana m'kubwa is most pleased with them, and that he is pleased with the way they have worked for him, and that he is pleased with the presents they have brought him. Tell them that he has no goods here with him, but that he has sent men back to the boma of bwana Kingozi for blankets and wire and cloth, and when those men return he will make a good present to these Masai and to Naiokotuku, their chief.

"Tell the Wanderobo that the bwana m'kubwa is pleased with them, and that he thanks them for coming so far to tell him of the elephant, and that he believes they have told him the truth. Tell them the bwana m'kubwa will not fight the elephant now, because he has not the time, but must go to attend to his affairs. But later, when two years have gone, he will make another safari, and will come back to this country, and will again ask these men to lead him out where he can fight the elephant. And in the meantime he will give them rupees with which to pay their hut tax to the Government."

After various compliments the sitting rose. Then we packed up for a few hours' march. In a short time we passed the chief's village. He came out to say good-bye. A copper bronze youth accompanied him, lithe as a leopard.

"My men have told me your words," said he. "I live always in these mountains, and my young men will bring me word when you return. I am glad the white men have come to see me. I shall have the Wanderobo ready to take you to fight the elephant when you return."

He then instructed the young man to accompany us for the purpose of bringing back the presents we had promised. We shook hands in farewell, and so parted from this friendly and powerful chief.

FOOTNOTES:

V.'s native name--the Master with the Red Beard.

XLIII.

THE TOPI CAMP.

At the next camp we stayed for nearly a week.

The country was charming. Mountains surrounded the long ellipse, near one edge of which we had pitched our tents. The ellipse was some ten miles long by four or five wide, and its surface rolled in easy billows to a narrow neck at the lower end. There we could just make out in the far distance a conical hill partly closing the neck. Atop the hill was a Masai manyatta, very tiny, with indistinct crawling red and brown blotches that meant cattle and sheep. Beyond the hill, and through the opening in the ellipse, we could see to another new country of hills and meadows and forest groves. In this clear air they were microscopically distinct. No blue of atmosphere nor shimmer of heat blurred their outlines. They were merely made small.

Our camp was made in the open above a tiny stream. We saw wonderful sunrises and sunsets, and always spread out before us was the sweep of our plains and the unbroken ramparts that hemmed us in. From these mountains meandered small stream-ways marked by narrow strips of trees and brush, but the most of the valley was of high green grass. Occasional ant hills ten feet tall rose conical from the earth; and the country was pleasingly broken and modelled, so that one continually surmounted knolls, low, round ridges, and the like. Of such conditions are surprises made.

The elevation here was some 7,000 feet, so that the nights were cold and the days not too warm. Our men did not fancy this change of weather. A good many of them came down with the fever always latent in their systems, and others suffered from bronchial colds.

At one time we had down sick eleven men out of our slender total. However, I believe, in spite of these surface symptoms, that the cold air did them good. It certainly improved our own appetites and staying power.

In the thirty or forty square miles of our valley were many herds of varied game. We here for the first time found Neuman's hartebeeste. The type at Narossara, and even in Lengetto, was the common Coke's hartebeeste, so that between these closely allied species there interposes at this point only the barriers of a climb and a forest. These animals and the zebra were the most plentiful of the game. The zebra were brilliantly white and black, with magnificent coats. Thompson's and Roberts' gazelles were here in considerable numbers, eland, Roosevelt's wildebeeste, giraffe, the smaller grass antelopes, and a fair number of topi. In the hills we saw buffalo sign, several cheetah, and heard many lions.

It had been our first plan that C. should return immediately to V.'s boma after supplies, but in view of the abundance of game we decided to wait over a day. We much desired to get four topi, and this seemed a good chance to carry some of them out. Also we wished to decide for certain whether or not the hartebeeste here was really of the Neuman variety.

We had great luck. Over the very first hill from camp we came upon a herd of about a dozen topi, feeding on a hill across the way. I knocked down the first one standing at just 250 paces. The herd then split and broke to right and left. By shooting very carefully and steadily I managed to kill three more before they were out of range. The last shot was at 325 paces. In all I fired seven shots, and hit six times. This was the best shooting I did in Africa--or anywhere else--and is a first-rate argument for the Springfield and the high velocity, sharp-pointed bullet.

Overjoyed at our luck in collecting these animals so promptly, so near camp, and at a time so very propitious for handling the trophies, we set to the job of skinning and cutting up. The able-bodied men all came out from camp to carry in the meat. They appeared, grinning broadly, for they had had no meat since leaving the Narossara. C. and I saw matters well under way, and then went on to where I had seen a cheetah the day before. Hardly were we out of sight when two lions sauntered over the hill and proceeded to appropriate the meat! The two men in charge promptly withdrew. A moment later a dozen porters on their way out from camp topped the hill and began to yell at the lions. The latter then slowly and reluctantly retreated.

We were very sorry we had not stayed. The valley seemed populated with lions, but in general they were, for some reason, strictly nocturnal. By day they inhabited the fastnesses of the mountain ranges. We never succeeded in tracing them in that large and labyrinthine country; nor at any time could we induce them to come to kills. Either their natural prey was so abundant that they did not fancy ready-killed food; or, what is more likely, the cold nights prevented the odour of the carcasses from carrying far. We heard lions every night; and every morning we conscientiously turned out before daybreak to crawl up to our bait through the wet, cold grass, but with no results. That very night we were jerked from a sound sleep by a tremendous roar almost in camp. So close was it that it seemed to each of us but just outside the tent. We came up all standing. The lion, apparently, was content with that practical joke, for he moved off quietly. Next morning we found where the tracks had led down to water, not ten yards away.

We spent the rest of that day spying on the game herds. It is fascinating work, to lie belly down on a tall ant hill, glasses steadied by elbows, picking out the individual animals and discussing them low-voiced with a good companion. C. and I looked over several hundred hartebeeste, trying to decide their identity. We were neither of us familiar with the animal, and had only recollections of the book distinctions. Finally I picked out one that seemed to present the most marked characteristics--and missed him clean at 280 yards. Then I took three shots at 180 yards to down a second choice. The poor shooting was forgotten, however, in our determination that this was indeed Neumanii.

A vain hunt for lions occupied all the next day. The third morning C. started for the boma, leaving Billy and me to look about us as we willed. Shortly after he had departed a delegation of Masai came in, dressed in their best, and bearing presents of milk. Leyeye was summoned as interpreter.

The Masai informed us that last night a lion had leapt the thorn walls of their boma, had pressed on through the fires, had seized a two-year-old steer, and had dragged the beast outside. Then the pursuit with spears and firebrands had become too hot for him, so that he had dropped his victim and retired. They desired (a) medicine for the steer, (b) magic to keep that lion away, (c) that I should assist them in hunting the lion down.

I questioned them closely, and soon discovered both that the lion must have been very bold, and also that he had received a pretty lively reception. Magic to keep him away seemed like a safe enough proposition, for the chances were he would keep himself away.

Therefore I filled a quart measure with clear water, passed my hand across its untroubled surface--and lo! it turned a clear bright pink!

Long-drawn exclamations of "Eigh! Eigh!" greeted this magic, performed by means of permanganate crystals held between the fingers.

"With this bathe the wounds of your steer. Then sprinkle the remainder over your cattle. The lion will not return," said I. Then reflecting that I was to be some time in the country, and that the lion might get over his scare, I added, "The power of this magic is three days."

They departed very much impressed. A little later Memba Sasa and I followed them. The manyatta was most picturesquely placed atop the conical hill at the foot of the valley. From its elevation we could see here and there in the distance the variegated blotches of red and white and black that represented the cattle herds. Innumerable flocks of sheep and goats, under charge of the small boys and youths, fed nearer at hand. The low smooth-plastered huts, with their abattis of thorn bush between, crowned the peak like a chaplet. Outside it sat a number of elders sunning themselves, and several smiling, good-natured young women, probably the spoiled darlings of these plutocrats. One of these damsels spake Swahili, so we managed to exchange compliments. They told us exactly when and how the lion had gone. Three nimble old gentlemen accompanied us when we left. They were armed with spears; and they displayed the most extraordinary activity, skipping here and there across the ravines and through the brush, casting huge stones into likely cover, and generally making themselves ubiquitous. However, we did not come up with the lion.

In our clinic that evening appeared one of the men claiming to suffer from rheumatism. I suspected him, and still suspect him, of malingering in advance in order to get out of the hard work we must soon undertake, but had no means of proving my suspicion. However, I decided to administer asperin. We possessed only the powdered form of the drug. I dumped about five grains on his tongue, and was about to proffer him the water with which to wash it down--when he inhaled sharply! I do not know the precise effect of asperin in the windpipe, but it is not pleasant. The boy thought himself bewitched. His eyes stuck out of his head; he gasped painfully; he sank to the ground; he made desperate efforts to bolt out into the brush. By main strength we restrained him, and forced him to swallow the water. Little by little he recovered. Next night I missed him from the clinic, and sent Abba Ali in search. The man assured Abba Ali most vehemently that the medicine was wonderful, that every trace of rheumatism had departed, that he never felt better in his life, and that (important point) he was perfectly able to carry a load on the morrow.

XLIV.

THE UNKNOWN LAND.

C. returned the next day from V.'s boma, bringing more potio and some trade goods. We sent a good present back to Naiokotuku, and prepared for an early start into the new country.

We marched out of the lower end of our elliptical valley towards the miniature landscape we had seen through the opening. But before we reached it we climbed sharp to the right around the end of the mountains, made our way through a low pass, and so found ourselves in a new country entirely. The smooth, undulating green-grass plains were now superseded by lava expanses grown with low bushes. It was almost exactly like the sage-brush deserts of Arizona and New Mexico--the same coarse sand and lava footing, the same deeply eroded barrancas, the same scattered round bushes dotted evenly over the scene. We saw here very little game. Across the way lay another range of low mountains clothed darkly with dull green, like the chaparral-covered coast ranges of California. In one place was a gunsight pass through which we could see other distant blue mountains. We crossed the arid plain and toiled up through the notch pass.

The latter made very difficult footing indeed, for the entire surface of the ground was covered with smooth, slippery boulders and rocks of iron and quartz. What had so smoothed them I do not know, for they seemed to be ill-placed for water erosion. The boys with their packs atop found this hard going, and we ourselves slipped and slid and bumped in spite of our caution.

Once through the pass we found ourselves overlooking a wide prospect of undulating thorn scrub from which rose occasional bushy hills, solitary buttes, and bold cliffs. It was a thick-looking country to make a way through.

Nevertheless somewhere here dwelt the Kudu, so in we plunged. The rest of the day--and of days to follow--we spent in picking a way through the thorn scrub and over loose rocks and shifting stones. A stream bed contained an occasional water hole. Tall aloes were ablaze with red flowers. The country looked arid, the air felt dry, the atmosphere was so clear that a day's journey seemed--usually--but the matter of a few hours. Only rarely did we enjoy a few moments of open travel. Most of the time the thorns caught at us. In the mountain passes were sometimes broad trails of game or of the Masai cattle. The country was harsh and dry and beautiful with the grays and dull greens of arid-land brush, or with the soft atmospheric tints of arid-land distances. Game was fairly common, but rather difficult to find. There were many buffalo, a very few zebra, leopards, hyenas, plenty of impalla, some sing-sing, a few eland, abundant wart-hog, Thompson's gazelle, and duiker. We never lacked for meat when we dared shoot it, but we were after nobler game. The sheep given us by Naiokotuku followed along under charge of the syces.

When we should run quite out of meat, we intended to eat them. We delayed too long, however. One evening the fool boy tied them to a thorn bush; one of them pulled back, the thorns bit, and both broke loose and departed into the darkness. Of course everybody pursued, but we could not recapture them. Ten minutes later the hyenas broke into the most unholy laughter. We could not blame them; the joke was certainly on us.

In passing, the cachinnations of the laughing hyena are rather a series of high-voiced self-conscious titters than laughter. They sound like the stage idea of a lot of silly and rather embarrassed old maids who have been accused by some rude man of "taking notice." This call is rarely used; indeed, I never heard it but the once. The usual note is a sort of moaning howl, impossible to describe, but easy to recognize.

Thus we penetrated gradually deeper and deeper into this wild country; through low mountains, over bush-clad plains, into thorn jungles, down wide valleys, over hill-divided plateaus. Late in the afternoon we would make camp. Sometimes we had good water; more often not. In the evening the throb of distant drums and snatches of intermittent wailing song rose and fell with the little night breezes.

XLV.

THE ROAN.

Our last camp, before turning back, we pitched about two o'clock one afternoon. Up to this time we had marched steadily down wide valleys, around the end of mountain ranges, moving from one room to the other of this hill-divided plateau. At last we ended on a slope that descended gently to water. It was grown sparingly with thorn trees, among which we raised our tents. Over against us, and across several low swells of grass and scrub-grown hills, was a range of mountains. Here, Mavrouki claimed, dwelt roan antelope.

We settled down quite happily. The country round about was full of game; the weather was cool, the wide sweeps of country, the upward fling of mountains and buttes were much like some parts of our great West. Almost every evening the thunderstorms made gorgeous piled effects in the distance. At night the lions and hyenas roared or howled, and some of the tiny fever owls impudently answered them back.

Various adventures came our way, some of which have been elsewhere narrated. Here we killed the very big buffalo that nearly got Billy. In addition, we collected two more specimens of the Neuman's hartebeeste, and two Chanler's reed buck.

But Mavrouki's glowing predictions as to roan were hardly borne out by facts. According to him the mountains simply swarmed with them--he had seen thirty-five in one day, etc. Of course we had discounted this, but some old tracks had to a certain extent borne out his statement.

Lunch time one day, however, found us on top of the highest ridge. Here we hunted up a bit of shade, and spent two hours out of the noon sun. While we lay there the sky slowly overcast, so that when we aroused ourselves to go on, the dazzling light had softened. As time was getting short, we decided to separate. Memba Sasa and Mavrouki were to go in one direction, while C., Kongoni and I took the other.

Before we started I remarked that I was offering two rupees for the capture of a roan.

We had not gone ten minutes when Kongoni turned his head cautiously and grinned back at us.

"My rupees," said he.

A fine buck roan stood motionless beneath a tree in the valley below us. He was on the other side of the stream jungle, and nearly a mile away. While we watched him, he lay down.

Our task now was to gain the shelter of the stream jungle below without being seen, to slip along it until opposite the roan, and then to penetrate the jungle near enough to get a shot. The first part of this contract seemed to us the most difficult, for we were forced to descend the face of the hill, like flies crawling down a blackboard, plain for him to see.

We slid cautiously from bush to bush; we moved by imperceptible inches across the numerous open spaces. About half-way down we were arrested by a violent snort ahead. Fifteen or twenty zebras nooning in the brush where no zebras were supposed to be, clattered down the hill like an avalanche. We froze where we were. The beasts ran fifty yards, then wheeled, and started back up the hill, trying to make us out. For twenty minutes all parties to the transaction remained stock still, the zebras staring, we hoping fervently they would decide to go down the valley and not up it, the roan dozing under his distant tree.

By luck our hopes were fulfilled. The zebra turned downstream, walking sedately away in single file. When we were certain they had all quite gone, we resumed our painful descent.

At length we dropped below the screen of trees, and could stand upright and straighten the kinks out of our backs. But now a new complication arose. The wind, which had been the very basis of our calculations, commenced to chop and veer. Here it blew from one quarter, up there on the side hill from another, and through the bushes in quite another direction still. Then without warning they would all shift about. We watched the tops of the grasses through our binoculars, hoping to read some logic into the condition. It was now four o'clock--our stalk had thus far consumed two hours--and the roan must soon begin to feed. If we were going to do anything, we must do it soon.

Therefore we crept through a very spiky, noisy jungle to its other edge, sneaked along the edge until we could make out the tree, and raised ourselves for a look. Through the glass I could just make out the roan's face stripe. He was still there!

Quite encouraged, I instantly dropped down and crawled to within range. When again I raised my head the roan had disappeared. One of these aggravating little side puffs of breeze had destroyed our two hours' work.

The outlook was not particularly encouraging. We had no means of telling how far the animal would go, nor into what sort of country; and the hour was well advanced toward sunset. However, we took up the track, and proceeded to follow it as well as we could. That was not easy, for the ground was hard and stony. Suddenly C. threw himself flat. Of course we followed his example. To us he whispered that he thought he had caught a glimpse of the animal through an opening and across the stream bed. We stalked carefully, and found ourselves in the middle of a small herd of topis, one of which, half concealed in the brush, had deceived C. This consumed valuable time. When again we had picked up the spoor, it was agreed that I was to still-hunt ahead as rapidly as I could, while C. and Kongoni would puzzle out the tracks as far as possible before dark.

Therefore I climbed the little rocky ridge on our left, and walked along near its crest, keeping a sharp lookout over the valley below--much as one would hunt August bucks in California. After two or three hundred yards I chanced on a short strip of soft earth in which the fresh tracks of the roan going uphill were clearly imprinted. I could not without making too much noise inform the others that I had cut in ahead of them; so I followed the tracks as cautiously and quietly as I could. On the very top of the hill the roan leapt from cover fifty yards away, and with a clatter of rocks dashed off down the ridge. The grass was very high, and I could see only his head and horns, but I dropped the front sight six inches and let drive at a guess. The guess happened to be a good one, for he turned a somersault seventy-two yards away.

C. and Kongoni came up. The sun had just set. In fifteen minutes it would be pitch dark. We dispatched Kongoni for help and lanterns, and turned to on the job of building a signal fire and skinning the trophy.

The reason for our strangely chopping wind now became apparent. From our elevation we could see piled thunder-clouds looming up from the west. They were spreading upward and outward in the swift, rushing manner of tropic storms; and I saw I must hustle if I was to get my fire going at all. The first little blaze was easy, and after that I had to pile on quantities of any wood I could lay my hands to. The deluge blotted out every vestige of daylight and nearly drowned out my fire. I had started to help C. with the roan, but soon found that I had my own job cut out for me, and so went back to nursing my blaze. The water descended in sheets. We were immediately soaked through, and very cold. The surface of the ground was steep and covered with loose round rocks, and in my continuous trips for firewood I stumbled and slipped and ran into thorns miserably.

After a long interval of this the lanterns came bobbing through the darkness, and a few moments later the dim light revealed the shining rain-soaked faces of our men.

We wasted no time in the distribution of burdens. C. with one of the lanterns brought up the rear, while I with the other went on ahead.

Now as Kongoni had but this minute completed the round trip to camp, we concluded that he would be the best one to give us a lead. This was a mistake. He took us out of the hills well enough, and a good job that was, for we could not see the length of our arms into the thick, rainy blackness, and we had to go entirely by the slants of the country. But once in the more open, sloping country, with its innumerable bushy or wooded ravines, he began to stray. I felt this from the first; but Kongoni insisted strongly he was right, and in the rain and darkness we had no way of proving him wrong. In fact I had no reason for thinking him wrong; I only felt it. This sense of direction is apparently a fifth wheel or extra adjustment some people happen to possess. It has nothing to do with acquired knowledge, as is very well proved by the fact that in my own case it acts only as long as I do not think about it. As soon as I begin consciously to consider the matter I am likely to go wrong. Thus many, many times I have back-tracked in the dark over ground I had traversed but once before, and have caught myself turning out for bushes or trees I could not see, but which my subconscious memory recalled. This would happen only when I would think of something besides the way home. As soon as I took charge, I groped as badly as the next man. It is a curious and sometimes valuable extra, but by no means to be depended upon.

Now, however, as I was following Kongoni, this faculty had full play, and it assured me vehemently that we were wrong. I called C. up from the rear for consultation. Kongoni was very positive he was right; but as we had now been walking over an hour, and camp should not have been more than three miles from where we had killed the roan, we were inclined towards my instinct. So we took the compass direction, in order to assure consistency at least, and struck off at full right angles to the left.

So we tramped for a long time. Every few moments Kongoni would want another look at that compass. It happened that we were now going due north, and his notion was that the needle pointed the way to camp. We profoundly hoped that his faith in white man's magic would not be shattered. At the end of an hour the rain let up, and it cleared sufficiently to disclose some of the mountain outlines. They convinced us that we were in the main right; though just where, to the north, camp now lay was beyond our power to determine. Kongoni's detour had been rather indeterminate in direction and distance.

The country now became very rough, in a small way. The feeble light of our leading lantern revealed only ghosts and phantoms and looming, warning suggestions of things which the shadows confused and shifted. Heavily laden men would have found it difficult travelling by prosaic daylight; but now, with the added impossibility of picking a route ahead, we found ourselves in all sorts of trouble. Many times we had to back out and try again. The ghostly flickering tree shapes against the fathomless black offered us apparently endless aisles that nevertheless closed before us like the doors of a trap when we attempted to enter them.

We kept doggedly to the same general northerly direction. When you are lost, nothing is more foolish than to make up your mind hastily and without due reflection; and nothing is more foolish than to change your mind once you have made it up. That way vacillation, confusion, and disaster lie. Should you decide, after due consideration of all the elements of the problem, that you should go east, then east you go, and nothing must turn you. You may get to the Atlantic Ocean if nothing else. And if you begin to modify your original plan, then you begin to circle. Believe me; I know.

Kongoni was plainly sceptical, and said so until I shut him up with some rather peremptory sarcasm. The bearers, who had to stumble in the dark under heavy burdens, were good-natured and joking. This we appreciated. One can never tell whether or not he is popular with a native until he and the native are caught in a dangerous or disagreeable fix.

We walked two hours as in a treadmill. Then that invaluable though erratic sixth sense of mine awoke. I stopped short.

"I believe we've come far enough," I shouted back to C., and fired my rifle.

We received an almost immediate answer from a short distance to the left. Not over two hundred yards in that direction we met our camp men bearing torches, and so were escorted in triumph after a sixteen-hour day.

FOOTNOTES:

"The Land of Footprints."

Six months after I had reached home, one of these thorns worked its way out of the calf of my leg.

XLVI.

THE GREATER KUDU.

Next morning, in a joking manner, I tried to impress Kongoni with a sense of delinquency in not knowing better his directions, especially as he had twice traversed the route. He declined to be impressed.

"It is not the business of man to walk at night," he replied with dignity.

And when you stop to think of it, it certainly is not--in Africa.

At this camp we lingered several days. The great prize of our journeying was still lacking, and, to tell the truth, we had about given up hope, if not our efforts. Almost we had begun to believe our friends in Nairobi who had scoffed at the uselessness of our quest. Always we conscientiously looked over good kudu country, hundreds of miles of it, and always with the same lack of result, or even of encouragement. Other game we saw in plenty, of a dozen different varieties, large and small; but our five weeks' search had thus far yielded us only the sight of the same old, old sign, made many months before. If you had stood with us atop one of the mountains, and with us had looked abroad on the countless leagues of rolling brush-clothed land, undulating away in all directions over a far horizon, you must with us have estimated as very slight the chances of happening on the exact pin point where the kudu at that moment happened to be feeding. For the beast is shy, it inhabits the densest, closest mountain cover, it possesses the keen eyesight and sense of smell of the bush-dwelling deer and antelope, and more than the average sense of hearing. There are very few of him. But the chief discouragement is that arising from his roaming tendencies. Other rare animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter finds tracks, new or old, his game is one of patient, skilful search. The greater kudu, however, seems in this country at least to be a wanderer. He is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Systematic search seems as foolish as in the case of the proverbial needle in the haystack. The only method is to sift constantly, and trust to luck. One cannot catch fish with the fly in the book, but one has at least a chance if one keeps it on the water.

Mavrouki was the only one among us who had the living faith that comes from having seen the animal in the flesh. That is a curious bit of hunter psychology. When a man is out after a species new to him, it is only by the utmost stretch of the imagination that he is able to realize that such an animal can exist at all. He cannot prefigure it, somehow. He generally exaggerates to himself the difficulty of making it out, of approaching it, of getting his shot; until at last, if he happens to have hunted some time in vain, the beast becomes almost mythical and unbelievable. Once he has seen the animal, whether he gets a shot or not, all this vanishes. The strain on faith relaxes. He knows what to look for, and what to expect; and even if he sees no other specimen for a month, he nevertheless goes about the business with a certain confidence.

One afternoon we had been hunting carefully certain low mountains, and were headed for camp, walking rather carelessly along the bed of a narrow, open valley below the bush-covered side hills. The sun had disappeared behind the ranges, and the dusk of evening was just beginning to rise like a mist from the deeps of the cañons. We had ceased hunting--it was time to hurry home--and happened not to be talking only because we were tired. By sheerest idle luck I chanced to look up to the densely covered face of the mountain. Across a single tiny opening in the tall brush five or six hundred yards away, I caught a movement. Still idly I lifted my glasses for a look at what I thought would prove the usual impalla or sing-sing, and was just in time to catch the spirals of a magnificent set of horns. It was the greater kudu at last!

I gave a little cluck of caution; and instantly, without question, after the African fashion, the three men ahead of me sank to the ground. C. looked at me inquiringly. I motioned with my eyes. He raised his glasses for one look.

"That's the fellow," he said quietly.

The kudu, as though he had merely stepped into the opening to give us a sight of him, melted into the brush.

It was magnificent and exciting to have seen this wonderful beast after so long a quest, but by the same token it was not very encouraging for all that. If we had had all the daylight we needed, and unlimited time, it would have been quite a feat to stalk the wary beast in that thick, noisy cover. Now it was almost dark, and would be quite dark within the half-hour. The kudu had moved out of sight. Whether he had gone on some distance, or whether he still lingered near the edge of the tiny opening was another matter to be determined, and to be determined quickly.

Leaving Kongoni and Mavrouki, C. and I wriggled pantingly up the hill, as fast and at the same time as cautiously as we could. At the edge of the opening we came to a halt, belly down, and began eagerly to scrutinize the brush across the way. If the kudu still lingered we had to find it out before we ventured out of cover to take up his trail. Inch by inch we scrutinized every possible concealment. Finally C. breathed sharp with satisfaction. He had caught sight of the tip of one horn. With some difficulty he indicated to me where. After staring long enough, we could dimly make out the kudu himself browsing, from the tender branch-ends.

All we could do was to lie low. If the kudu fed on out of sight into the cover, we could not possibly get a shot; if he should happen again to cross the opening, we would get a good shot. No one but a hunter can understand the panting, dry-mouthed excitement of those minutes; five weeks' hard work hung in the balance. The kudu did neither of these things; he ceased browsing, took three steps forward, and stood.

The game seemed blocked. The kudu had evidently settled down for a snooze; it was impossible, in the situation, to shorten the distance without being discovered; the daylight was almost gone; we could make out no trace of him except through our glasses. Look as hard as we could, we could see nothing with the naked eye. Unless something happened within the next two minutes, we would bring nothing into camp but the memory of a magnificent beast. And next day he would probably be inextricably lost in the wilderness of mountains.

It was a time for desperate measures, and, to C.'s evident doubtful anxiety, I took them. Through the glasses the mane of the kudu showed as a dim gray streak. Carefully I picked out two twigs on a bush fifteen feet from me, and a tuft of grass ten yards on, all of which were in line with where the shoulder of the kudu ought to be. Then I lowered my glasses. The gray streak of the kudu's mane had disappeared in the blending twilight, but I could still see the tips of the twigs and the tuft of grass. Very carefully I aligned the sights with these; and, with a silent prayer to the Red Gods, loosed the bullet into the darkness.

At the crack of the rifle the kudu leapt into plain sight.

"Hit!" rasped C. in great excitement.

I did not wait to verify this, but fired four times more as fast as I could work the bolt. Three of the bullets told. At the last shot he crumpled and came rolling down the slope. We both raised a wild whoop of triumph, which was answered at once by the expectant gunbearers below.

The finest trophy in Africa was ours!

FOOTNOTES:

Trailing for any distance was impossible on account of the stony soil.

XLVII.

THE MAGIC PORTALS CLOSE.

It seemed hopeless to try for a picture. Nevertheless I opened wide my lens, steadied the camera, and gave it a half-second. The result was fairly good. So much for a high grade lens. We sent Kongoni into camp for help, and ourselves proceeded to build up the usual fire for signal and for protection against wild beasts. Then we sat down to enjoy the evening, while Mavrouki skinned the kudu.

We looked abroad over a wide stretch of country. Successive low ridges crossed our front, each of a different shade of slate gray from its neighbours, and a gray half-luminous mist filled the valley between them. The edge of the world was thrown sharp against burnished copper. After a time the moon rose.

Memba Sasa arrived before the lanterns, out of breath, his face streaming with perspiration. Poor Memba Sasa! this was almost the only day he had not followed close at my heels, and on this day we had captured the Great Prize. No thought of that seemed to affect the heartiness of his joy. He rushed up to shake both my hands; he examined the kudu with an attention that was held only by great restraint; he let go that restrain to shake me again enthusiastically by the hands. After him, up the hill, bobbed slowly the lanterns. The smiling bearers shouldered the trophy and the meat, and we stumbled home through the half shadows and the opalescences of the moonlight.

Our task in this part of the country was now finished. We set out on the return journey. The weather changed. A beautiful, bright-copper sunset was followed by a drizzle. By morning this had turned into a heavy rain. We left the topi camp, to which we had by now returned, cold and miserable. C. and I had contributed our waterproofs to protect the precious trophies, and we were speedily wet through. The grass was long. This was no warm and grateful tropical rain, but a driving, chilling storm straight out from the high mountains.

We marched up the long plain, we turned to the left around the base of the ranges, we mounted the narrow grass valley, we entered the forest--the dark, dripping, and unfriendly forest. Over the edge we dropped and clambered down through the hanging vines and the sombre trees. By-and-by, we emerged on the open plains below, the plains on the hither side of the Narossara, the Africa we had known so long. The rain ceased. It was almost as though a magic portal had clicked after us. Behind it lay the wonderful secret upper country of the unknown.

XLVIII.

THE LAST TREK.

Some weeks later we camped high on the slopes of Suswa, the great mountain of the Rift Valley, only one day's march from the railroad. After the capture of the kudu Africa still held for us various adventures--a buffalo, a go of fever, and the like--but the culmination had been reached. We had lingered until the latest moment, reluctant to go. Now in the gray dawn we were filing down the slopes of the mountains for the last trek. A low, flowing mist marked the distant Kedong; the flames of an African sunrise were revelling in the eastern skies. All our old friends seemed to be bidding us good-bye. Around the shoulder of the mountains a lion roared, rumble upon rumble. Two hyenas leapt from the grass, ran fifty yards, and turned to look at us.

"Good-bye, simba! good-bye, fice!" we cried to them sadly.

A little farther we saw zebra, and the hartebeeste, and the gazelles. One by one appeared and disappeared again the beasts with which we had grown so familiar during our long months in the jungle. So remarkable was the number of species that we both began to comment upon the fact, to greet the animals, to bid them farewell, as though they were reporting in order from the jungle to bid us God-speed. Half in earnest we waved our hands to them and shouted our greetings to them in the native--punda milia, kongoni, pa-a, fice, m'pofu, twiga, simba, n'grooui, and the rest. Before our eyes the misty ranges hardened and stiffened under the fierce sun. Our men marched steadily, cheerfully, beating their loads in rhythm with their safari sticks, crooning under their breaths, and occasionally breaking into full-voiced chant. They were glad to be back from the long safari, back from across the Thirst, from the high, cold country, from the dangers and discomforts of the unknown. We rode a little wistfully, for these great plains and mysterious jungles, these populous, dangerous, many-voiced nights, these flaming, splendid dawnings and day-falls, these fierce, shimmering noons we were to know no more.

Two days we had in Nairobi before going to the coast. There we paid off and dismissed our men, giving them presents according to the length and faithfulness of their service. They took them and departed, eagerly, as was natural, to the families and the pleasures from which they had been so long separated. Mohammed said good-bye, and went, and was sorry; Kongoni departed, after many and sincere protestations; quiet little Mavrouki came back three times to shake hands again, and disappeared reluctantly--but disappeared; Leyeye went; Abba Ali followed the service of his master, C.; "Timothy" received his present--in which he was disappointed--and departed with salaams. Only Memba Sasa remained. I paid him for his long service, and I gave him many and rich presents, and bade farewell to him with genuine regret and affection.

Memba Sasa had wives and a farm near town, neither of which possessions he had seen for a very long while. Nevertheless he made no move to see them. When our final interview had terminated with the usual "Bags" (It is finished), he shook hands once more and withdrew, but only to take his position across the street. There he squatted on his heels, fixed his eyes upon me, and remained. I went down town on business. Happening to glance through the office window I caught sight of Memba Sasa again across the street, squatted on his heels, his gaze fixed unwaveringly on my face. So it was for two days. When I tried to approach him, he glided away, so that I got no further speech with him; but always, quietly and unobtrusively, he returned to where he could see me plainly. He considered that our interview had terminated our official relations, but he wanted to see the last of the bwana with whom he had journeyed so far.

One makes many acquaintances as one knocks about the world; and once in a great many moons one finds a friend--a man the mere fact of whose existence one is glad to realize, whether one ever sees him again or not. These are not many, and they are of various degree. Among them I am glad to number this fierce savage. He was efficient, self-respecting, brave, staunch, and loyal with a great loyalty. I do not think I can better end this book than by this feeble tribute to a man whose opportunities were not many, but whose soul was great.

THE END

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