TO THE UASIN GISHU 329 



high that the nights were actually cold, although we crossed 

 and recrossed the equator. The landscape in its general 

 effect called to mind southern Oregon and northern Cali- 

 fornia rather than any tropical country. Some of the hills 

 were bald, others wooded to the top; there were wet 

 meadows, and hill-sides covered with tussocks of rank, thick- 

 growing grass, alternating with stretches of forest; and the 

 chief trees of the forest were stately cedars, yews, and tall 

 laurel-leaved olives. All this was, at least in superficial 

 aspect, northern enough; but now and then we came to 

 patches of the thoroughly tropical bamboo, which in East 

 Africa, however, one soon grows to associate with cold, 

 rainy weather, for it only grows at high altitudes. In this 

 country, high, cold, rainy, there were several kinds of buck, 

 but none in any numbers. The most interesting were the 

 roan antelope, which went in herds. Their trails led every- 

 where, across the high, rolling hill pastures of coarse grass, 

 and through the tangled tree groves and the still, lifeless 

 bamboo jungle. They were found in herds and lived in the 

 open, feeding on the bare hill-sides and in the wet valleys 

 at all hours; but they took cover freely, and when the 

 merciless gales blew they sought shelter in woodland and 

 jungle. Usually they grazed, but once I saw one browsing. 

 Both on our way in and on our way back, through this hill 

 country, we shot several roan, for, though their horns are 

 poor, they form a distinct sub-species, peculiar to the re- 

 gion. The roan is a big antelope, nearly as tall, although 

 by no means as bulky, as an eland, with curved scimitar- 

 like horns, huge ears, and face markings as sharply defined 

 as those of an oryx. It is found here and there, in isolated 

 localities, throughout Africa south of the Sahara, and is of 



