294 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



tents close to half a dozen flat-topped thorn-trees. We 

 spent several days at this camp. Many kites came around 

 the tents, but neither vultures nor ravens. The country 

 was a vast plain bounded on almost every hand by chains 

 of far-off mountains. In the south-west, just beyond the 

 equator, the snows of Kenia lifted toward the sky. To the 

 north the barren ranges were grim with the grimness of the 

 desert. The flats were covered with pale, bleached grass 

 which waved all day long in the wind; for though there 

 were sometimes calms, or changes in the wind, on most of 

 the days we were out it never ceased blowing from some 

 point in the south. In places the parched soil was crumbling 

 and rotten; in other places it was thickly strewn with vol- 

 canic stones; there were but few tracts over which a horse 

 could gallop at speed, although neither the rocks nor the 

 rotten soil seemed to hamper the movements of the game. 

 Here and there were treeless stretches. Elsewhere there 

 were occasional palms; and trees thirty or forty feet high, 

 seemingly cactus or aloes, which looked even more like 

 candelabra than the euphorbia which is thus named; and 

 a scattered growth of thorn-trees and bushes. The thorn- 

 trees were of many kinds. One bore only a few leathery 

 leaves, the place of foliage being taken by the mass of poi- 

 sonous-looking, fleshy spines which, together with the 

 ends of the branches, were bright green. The camel-thorn 

 was completely armed with little, sharply hooked thorns 

 which tore whatever they touched, whether flesh or clothes. 

 Then there were the mimosas, with long, straight thorn 

 spikes; they are so plentiful in certain places along the 

 Guaso Nyero that almost all the lions have festering sores 

 in their paws because of the spikes that have broken off in 



