130 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
or three hours I was conscious of a great fire to the 
east, but there was little wind and it travelled slowly. 
Whenever it came to one of the fields of elephant 
grass the roaring and crackling was quite appalling, 
and when it finally reached the clump of grass nearest 
our camp we realized that we would probably have 
tomakeafight. ‘There was no time to backfire and so 
we tried the next best thing. About twenty-five yards 
from the tents we started to make a trail stretching 
for a hundred yards across the path of the fire. This 
was done by bending the grass down on both sides, 
leaving a path along which we could move freely. 
Then the job was to stop the fire at the parting of the 
grass. A hundred men, each provided with an arm- 
ful of green branches, scattered along this thin line 
to beat the fire out as it reached the division. We 
had a terrific fight. In several places the fire jumped 
across the trail, but each time enough men concen- 
trated at that point to kill it before it got an over- 
powering foothold. It was hot, smoky, desperate 
work. When it was ended, the tents were safe al- 
though the men were thoroughly done up. 
It was one of these grass fires, although by no means 
such a persistent one, that threatened Roosevelt’s 
camp the night after our elephant hunt on the Uasin 
Gishu Plateau. 
