CH. XT] TX THE HOT (OrXTHV AGAIX 280 



A long day's march brought us down to the hot 

 country. That e\eninn- we pitched our tents by u 

 rapid brook bordered by pahns, wliose long, stiff fronds 

 rustled ceaselessly in the wind. Monkeys swung in the 

 tree-tops. On the march I shot a Kavirondo crane on 

 the wing with the little Springfield, almost exactly 

 repeating my experience with the other crane which I 

 had shot tlu-ee weeks before, except that on this occasion 

 I brouglit down the bird with my third bullet, and then 

 wasted the last two cartridges in the magazine at his 

 companions. At dusk the donkeys were driven to a 

 fire within tiie camp, and they stood patiently round it 

 in a circle throughout the night, safe from lions and 

 hyenas. 



Next days march brouglit us to another small 

 tributary of the (Tuaso Nyero, a little stream twisting 

 rapidly through the plain between sheer banks. Here 

 and there it was edged with palms and beds of bul- 

 rushes. A\'e pitched the tents close to half a dozen 

 flat-topped thorn-trees. ^Ve spent several days at this 

 camp. ^Nlany kites came around the tents, but neither 

 vultures nor ravens. The country was a vast plain 

 bounded on almost every hand by chains of far-ofi' 

 mountains. In the south-west, just beyond the Equator, 

 the snows of Kenia lifted toward the sky. To the 

 north the barren ranges were grim with the grimness of 

 the desert. The fiats were covered with pale, bleached 

 grass which waved all day long in the wind ; for though 

 there were sometimes calms, or changes in the wind, on 

 most of the days we were out it never ceased blowing 

 from some point in the south. In places the parched 

 soil was crumbling and rotten ; in other places it was 

 thickly strewn with volcanic stones. There were but 

 few tracts over which a horse could gallop at speed, 



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