328 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



touch of that craving for ease and luxury the indulgence in 

 which turns any sport into a sham and a laughing-stock. 

 Big-game hunting, pursued as he has pursued it, stands 

 at the opposite pole from those so-called sports carried on 

 primarily either as money-making exhibitions, or, what is 

 quite as bad though the two evils are usually found in 

 different social strata in a spirit of such luxurious self- 

 indulgence as to render them at best harmless extravagances, 

 and at worst forces which positively tend to the weakening 

 of moral and physical fibre. 



On October 26, Tarlton, Kermit, Heller, and I started 

 from the railroad station of Londiani, for the Uasin Gishu 

 plateau and the 'Nzoi River, which flows not far from the 

 foot of Mount Elgon. This stretch of country has appar- 

 ently received its fauna from the shores of Lake Victoria 

 Nyanza, and contains several kinds of antelope, and a 

 race or variety of giraffe, the five-horned, which are not 

 found to the eastward, in the region where we had already 

 hunted. 



On the 27th we were marching hard, and I had no 

 chance to hunt; I would have liked to take a hunt, because 

 it was my birthday. The year before I had celebrated my 

 fiftieth birthday by riding my jumping horse, Roswell, over 

 all the jumps in Rock Creek Park, at Washington. Ros- 

 well is a safe and good jumper, and a very easy horse to sit 

 at a jump; he took me, without hesitation or error, over 

 everything, from the water jump to the stone wall, the rails, 

 and the bank, including a brush hurdle just over five feet 

 and a half high. 



For the first four days our route led among rolling 

 hills and along valleys and ravines, the country being so 



