222 STALKS ABROAD 



sort Kipling must have had in mind when he wrote 

 of "great spaces washed with sun." In the fore- 

 ground a herd of zebra were quietly feeding. Behind 

 them the ground sloped, gently at first and then 

 in an abrupt dip to the outlying thickets of the 

 huge juniper forest which stretched almost as far 

 as the eye could reach. To the right the Aberdares 

 threw a great mass of blue and gold, yellow and 

 green, into the evening sky and then crept silently 

 into the sombre leafy depths which lay below. 



Beyond the zebra, the grasses, the evensong of the 

 birds and the forest itself, beyond the bright green 

 streaks of plain telling of the welcome rains and the 

 herds of cattle whose units I could even at that 

 distance distinguish, rose Kenia. Who, I wonder, 

 has ever done justice through the sober medium of 

 prose to that portion broken from the heavens and 

 cast down upon the earth which we call a mountain ? 

 I suppose that one must know the hills from childhood 

 to feel the thrill which comes to a highlander at the 

 sight of such an one as Kenia. Sheer from the plain it 

 rose. The evening sky shot with every delicate shade 

 of pink flamed behind, flushed here and there with the 

 deeper stain of some forest fire whose pall of smoke 

 floated in strange forms above the horizon. Every 

 colour and shade it is possible to imagine glowed on 

 its southern slopes, whilst the northern contour faded 

 away into deepest indigo. Blue and green rose its 

 delicate lines leading the eye ever upward until they 

 culminated in the snow-capped summit poised in 



