TREKKING THROUGH THE THIRST 157 



and shape, for at dawn the bird songs made real music. 

 The naturalists trapped many small mammals: big-eared 

 mice looking like our white-footed mice, mice with spiny 

 fur, mice that lived in trees, rats striped like our chip- 

 munks, rats that jumped like jerboas, big cane-rats, dor- 

 mice, and tiny shrews. Meercats, things akin to a small 

 mongoose, lived out in the open plains, burrowing in com- 

 panies like prairie dogs, very spry and active, and looking 

 like picket pins when they stood up on end to survey us. 

 I killed a nine-foot python which had swallowed a rab- 

 bit. Game was not plentiful, but we killed enough for 

 the table. I shot a wildebeest bull one day, having edged 

 up to it on foot, after missing it standing; I broke it down 

 with a bullet through the hips as it galloped across my front 

 at three hundred yards. Kermit killed our first topi, a bull; 

 a beautiful animal, the size of a hartebeest, its glossy coat 

 with a satin sheen, varying from brown to silver and purple. 

 By the Guaso Nyero we halted for several days; and 

 we arranged to leave Mearns and Loring in a permanent 

 camp, so that they might seriously study and collect the 

 birds and small mammals while the rest of us pushed 

 wherever we wished after the big game. The tents were 

 pitched, and the ox wagons drawn up on the southern side 

 of the muddy river, by the edge of a wide plain, on which 

 we could see the game grazing as we walked around camp. 

 The alluvial flats bordering the river, and some of the 

 higher plains, were covered with an open forest growth, the 

 most common tree looking exactly like a giant sage-brush, 

 thirty feet high; and there were tall aloes and cactus and 

 flat-topped mimosa. We found a wee hedgehog, with much 

 white about it. He would cuddle up in my hand snuffing 



