BRITISH EAST AFRICA 169 



crept slowly and by degrees up through the wooded 

 hills to the high plains and hills which lay beyond. 

 Past Tsavo, which Colonel Patterson has made famous 

 by his tale of its man-eaters ; past Makindu, whence, 

 if luck favours, the blue mass of Kilimanjaro, abode 

 of the great spirit, may be seen. From there, onwards 

 until Nairobi, game was almost continually in sight. 

 With the first streaks of dawn I was standing on 

 the outside platform. Soon I was rewarded. A group 

 of hartebeest came slowly into view, as we crept up 

 a gradient, standing like bronze statues, their ugly 

 heads in the air ; they never moved, and as we 

 gathered speed, faded, mysterious shadows, into the 

 trees. 



What animal did I not gaze upon, crossing the 

 great Athi plains? Lion and rhino were absent, 

 though they are often to be seen, but that was about 

 all. Zebras flicked their heels in sheer exuberance 

 of spirits, and raced madly along within thirty yards 

 of the line. Giraffes, a perpetual smile imprinted on 

 their features, peered at us over the mimosa scrub ; 

 uncouth wildebeestes deluded the unwary into the 

 belief that they were buffaloes ; hartebeest swarmed 

 in hundreds ; through a belt of trees dashed a herd 

 of beautiful impala ; three huge boars, the ends of 

 their tails oddly drooping, careered across the flat 

 expanse at our approach ; troops of graceful gazelles, 

 both Grant and Thomson, fed quietly within a few 

 hundred yards of the stations at which we stopped ; in 

 the distance wary ostriches made bold black splodges 



