KENYA (i!) 313 
in northeast Uganda when only a day or two old and brought up 
on the bottle; children had ridden on his back until he became too 
tall. He was now about three years old and nearly eleven feet 
high and until he came on this train he had never been in the 
company of his own kind, except, of course, on the day of his 
birth. He was so accustomed to human beings that he was inclined 
to frown on his fellow creatures, and when liberated with his 
companions in the London Zoo he completely ignored them for a 
long time. Nature, however, eventually had its way, and Twiga 
became the proud father of two children at Whipsnade. 
Perhaps the most amazing character was a giraffe called Midget, 
after my own nickname, caught only a fortnight before I left. To 
look after him and his companions on the train I had to jump 
from truck to truck and work my way along the edge of them, 
as each giraffe crate occupied their full width. To do this while 
carrying a bucket of water or food as the train swayed round 
sharp bends was no easy task, and with only one hand free I 
might easily have been flung on to the track. 
Midget at this stage was a mixture of hostility and friendliness, 
or perhaps the latter was merely curiosity. When I was climbing 
along the side of his crate he several times threatened to kick me 
off the train, but at night when I was so tired that I lay down on 
some sacks of corn near Midget and went fast asleep, he woke 
me up several times by stretching out his long neck and licking 
my face. 
In passing under the lowest of the bridges the engine driver 
slowed down the train to a snail’s pace as Twiga was very near the 
safety limit in height, and in fact the bridge cleared him only by 
a few inches. 
The ship’s captain greeted me by handing me a rifle and ammu- 
nition—just in case a lion escaped! But after introducing him to 
these animals and patting every one in turn, the rifles were put 
away and forgotten. Everything was finally slung on board and 
battened down. Truckloads of food were somehow stored away 
and eventually the zoo ship left Mombasa harbor with a great 
crowd of onlookers to see us off. 
The Urlana was constructed for carrying coal from one Indian 
