TO LAKE NAIVASHA 225 



lanterns and shot-guns, and each killed one of the spring- 

 haas, the jumping hares, which abounded in the neigh- 

 borhood. These big, burrowing animals, which progress 

 by jumping like kangaroos, are strictly nocturnal, and their 

 eyes shine in the glare of the lanterns. 



Next day I took the Fox gun, which had already on 

 ducks, guinea-fowl, and francolin shown itself an excep- 

 tionally hard-hitting and close-shooting weapon, and col- 

 lected various water birds for the naturalists; among 

 others, a couple of Egyptian geese. I also shot a white pel- 

 ican with the Springfield rifle; there was a beautiful rosy 

 flush on the breast. 



Here we again got news of the outside world. While 

 on safari the only newspaper which any of us ever saw was 

 the Oivego Gazette, which Loring, in a fine spirit of neigh- 

 borhood loyalty, always had sent to him in his mail. To 

 the Doctor, by the way, I had become knit in a bond of 

 close intellectual sympathy ever since a chance allusion 

 to "William Henry's Letters to His Grandmother" had 

 disclosed the fact that each of us, ever since the days of his 

 youth, had preserved the bound volumes of "Our Young 

 Folks," and moreover firmly believed that there never had 

 been its equal as a magazine, whether for old or young; 

 even though the Plancus of our golden consulship was the 

 not wholly happy Andrew Johnson. 



