CHAPTER II 



ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 



The house at which we were staymg stood on the 

 beautiful Kitanga Hills. They were so named after an 

 Englishman, to whom the natives had given the name 

 of Kitanga. Some years ago, as we were told, he had 

 been killed by a lion near where the ranch house now 

 stood ; and we were shown his grave in the little 

 JNIachakos graveyard. The house was one story high, 

 clean and comfortable, with a veranda rumiing round 

 three sides ; and on the veranda were lion-skins and the 

 skull of a rhinoceros. From the house we looked over 

 hills and wide, lonely plains ; the green valley below, 

 with its flat-topped acacias, was very lovely ; and in the 

 evening we could see, scores of miles away, the snowy 

 summit of mighty Kilimanjaro turn crimson in the 

 setting sun. The twilights were not long ; and when 

 night fell, stars new to Northern eyes flashed glorious in 

 the sky. Above the horizon hung the Southern Cross, 

 and directly opposite in the heavens was our old familiar 

 friend the Wain, the Great Bear, upside down and 

 pointing to a North Star so low behind a hill that M^e 

 could not see it. It is a dry country, and we saw it in 

 the second year of a drought ; yet 1 believe it to be a 

 country of high promise for settlers of white race. In 

 many ways it reminds one rather curiously of the great 



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