with Flashlight and Rifle ^ 



indescribably violent electric manifestations, soon strikes 

 terror into tiie camp, and does great injury in a very short 

 space of time. No matter how often it is endured, 

 this particular ex|)erience never loses its terror — the 

 threatening- bank of rain-clouds that comes with the 

 falling of darkness ; the flashes of lightning and sudden 

 ofusts of wind ; the roaring^ torrents of rain that flood the 

 camp, drowning in a trice all our poultry and the young 

 animals of the herds we have brought with us ; the 

 shivering and half-benuml^ed men, scarcely sheltered by 

 their meagre tents, cowering miserably on the ground ! 



I remember one such night ot tropical storm in British 

 East Africa. It was on the watershed between the 

 A^ictoria Nyanza and the country which drains into the 

 Indian Ocean ; therefore at a considerable height above 

 the sea. 



And that time there was combined with the fury of 

 the unchained elements the anxiety which is awakened 

 m the traveller by a precarious situation in a hostile 

 neighbourhood. A revolt of the hill-folk was endangering 

 the caravan-road, which, since those days, has been 

 replaced by railways. 



The British Government was then, as now, concerned 

 only with the security of this caravan-road, and, naturally 

 enough, took little notice of what was happening else- 

 where in the country round about — a sage measure, since 

 the maintenance of order, in the European sense of the 

 word, would require innumerable soldiers and officials ! 



The officer commandinor the fort of Nandi could 

 only allow me from there eight Sudanese Askaris as a 



670 



