( 503 ) 



butterflies. I went back to Mombasa to send off my low country catch, and came 

 back here in October (1900) to find the rains beginniug, the butterflies very few, 

 and yet nothing to take their place. However, I am going to stay here till the 

 moths are out, if I live here for ever. I have built a hut for my men and pitched 

 my tent half a mile from the present terminus of the Uganda Railway. Never was 

 a more uncomfortable place. Half of my men — and they are the best I have ever 

 had — are permanently down with 'jiggers ' (sand fleas); their feet are awful to look 

 at. I am 'jiggered' myself, but not so badly. The cold seems to us intense ; we 

 are 8,000 feet above the sea, in old forest. At first I slept under a sheet, three 

 blankets, my clothes and a heavy overcoat, and my men under more, having thicker 

 blankets. Twice already we have had encounters with lions in broad daylight; one 

 victory, one defeat; a rogue elejihant haunts our liest collecting ground, a herd 

 of rhinoceros seem omnipresent, and my men have twice been charged. Being 

 in the uninhabited district between the Masai and Wa Kikuyu, we are, so to say, 

 between the hammer and the anvil, though hitherto we have no trouble — they 

 fight all the time. The Wa Kikuyu seem perfectly harmless ; we are going alone 

 in the jungle, on our pursuits. 



" On the other hand, this is a grand place. The forest trees are enormous, 

 junipers ten feet thick and 120 feet high, utterly different from the thorny scrub 

 at Kibwezi and Rabai. We are on the slope of the Settima range, and just at 

 our feet is the broad yellow desert of the Rift Valley. Our forest continues 

 uubrokep to the Aberdare range, 14,000 feet high, and still unexjilored, and I believe 

 Kenya is an eastern offshoot of that. We are cut ofl" from Kilimanjaro by nearly 

 200 miles of desert or grassy plain. A strong wind blows down from us to 

 the Rift night and day, making bird skinning and drying extraordinarily difficult. 

 My birds are almost entirely from above 7,000, up to at least 9,0iJ0 feet." 



In a later letter (February 14th), he writes : 



" We have had the usual adventures. The first were with lions and rhinos. 

 Lately it has been with wild buffalo, a rogue elephant, and a leopard who comes into 

 our boma every night. We are on peaceful terms with the natives up till now. I 

 am only afraid of the Masai — we are just ou the boundary line. The Wa Kikuyu 

 got a severe lesson in August, after raiding the Panjabis and killing six, so they are 

 quiet for the time. 



" I am still very uncertain about moving on to Man so long as it is so cold 

 there, or we are so broken down with scurvy. Here we can get some vegetables by 

 paying for them, and I hope in a couple of days to have the whole party all right 

 again. Man is uninhabited except by the wandering Wa Ndorobo. It is less 

 dangerous than this place, which is exposed to Masai raids ; but once down with 

 scurvy, in those gloomy, pathless woods at Man, one's chance of recovery is small. 

 The weather now is awful (February 14th). With a few days of sunshine for 

 drying I could send off a great lot of birds, which are very much in my way 

 here, and would be more in the way farther on, where there is not a single galvanised 

 iron building, everybody living in tents. Here I live myself in a tent ever since 

 September 1900, but my men and collections are under a waterproof roof. 



" British East Africa here ajjpears to me simply as an appendage to the railway, 

 and the shopkeepers are thoroughly spoiled. After British model colonies like 

 those in the Malay Peninsula (Perak, Peuang), the contrast is very great. Except 

 in Uganda and a few miles around Mombasa and Nairobi, there is no attempt to 

 keep the country safe and quiet. Only the otlier night 1 had to fight for my life 



