168 STALKS ABROAD 



to-day are unobtainable. Gone, too, are the days, 

 when, but a few miles from the coast, no white man's 

 life was safe. So time rolls on ; the old order changes, 

 giving place to new, whilst we who watch can but 

 suppose that it is all for the best, albeit with a sigh, 

 for the years that are gone have carried with them 

 much of the romance of Africa and of the glory which 

 clothed the early hunters of big game. 



Nowadays the sportsman reaches and leaves Mom- 

 basa with the regularity of a railway time-table. His 

 rifles are stamped ; his trophies noted ; his boundaries 

 defined ; and so he wanders off, a somewhat pathetic 

 figure with his little tape-measure and his English- 

 speaking headman. Later, he returns to quibble over 

 the fraction of an inch in the length of some trophy, 

 and to tell his pals at home of how he met Miss 

 So-and-so, late of the Gaiety, and her noble husband, 

 late of the Guards, so many miles from anywhere in 

 the heart of Africa, whilst his pals say, " Lucky devil ! 

 Do you remember the evening, &c. , &c. ! " 



And lucky indeed he is, for though, as Stevenson 

 remarks, it is but a poor world for the gipsily inclined 

 among men, it is but few who look upon the faces 

 of the gods, veiled though they be. 



And so one day my dreams crystallised, and I 

 found myself embarked on a bright February morning, 

 upon the most wonderful train journey the world 

 has to show. Across the narrow channel which 

 separates the island of Mombasa from the mainland 

 we rumbled, leaving behind us the flat coast, and 



