126 A BUFFALO HUNT [ch. vi 



herd of buffalo, numbering perhaps a hundred indi- 

 viduals. They are semi-aquatic beasts, and their 

 enormous strength enables them to plough through the 

 mud and water and burst their way among the papyrus 

 stems without the slightest difficulty, whereas a man is 

 nearly helpless when once he has entered the reed-beds. 

 They had made paths hither and thither across the 

 swamp, these paths being three feet deep in ooze and 

 black water. There were little islands in the swamp on 

 which they could rest. Toward its lower end, where 

 it ran into the Nairobi, the Kamiti emerged from the 

 papyrus swamp and became a rapid brown stream of 

 water, with only here and there a papyrus cluster along 

 its banks. 



The Nairobi, which cut across the lower end of the 

 farm, and the Rewero, which bounded it on the other 

 side from the Kamiti, were as different as possible from 

 the latter. Both were rapid streams broken by riffle 

 and waterfall, and running at the bottom of tree-clad 

 valleys. The Nairobi Falls, which were on Heatley's 

 Ranch, were singularly beautiful. Heatley and I visited 

 them one evening after sunset, coming home from a 

 day's hunt. It was a ride I shall long remember. We 

 left our men, and let the horses gallop. As the sun 

 set behind us, the long lights changed the look of the 

 country and gave it a beauty that had in it an element 

 of the mysterious and the unreal. The mountains 

 loomed both larger and more vague than they had been 

 in the bright sunlight, and the plains lost their look 

 of parched desolation as the afterglow came and went. 

 We were galloping through a world of dim shade and 

 dying colour ; and, in this world, our horses suddenly 

 halted on the brink of a deep ravine from out of which 

 came the thunder of a cataract. We reined up on a 



