194 THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 



work back to Myeru's. Made a two-hour walk, and 

 had a flurry of rain, but found no good prospects. 



The nature of the country is most beautiful, and I 

 must try to describe it. Conceive a perfectly flat 

 green lawn of indefinite extent; the grass short as 

 though mown; nowhere, even next the trees, growing 

 into high ragged clumps. Plant this lawn sparingly 

 with small trees with white trunks, like birch trees, far 

 enough apart not to spoil the open appearance, but 

 thick enough to close in the view at quarter of a mile. 

 Then scatter over this lawn flowers that grow flat to 

 the ground, with barely an inch of stem to support 

 them, so that they give the impression of having been 

 scattered fresh cut. They are four petaUed, velvet in 

 texture, the exact shape and size of a wild rose. Most 

 of them are white, but a very few range in colour from 

 deep red to pale pink. Across the sweeps and flats 

 they lie spangling the turf sparsely; but in tiny de- 

 pressions they are as though drifted. In addition to 

 these are occasional other flowers, high growing, with 

 stems, some flesh coloured, some brightred and upstand- 

 ing, some orange and yellow, and some with feathery 

 leaves trailing vine-like along the ground. But they 

 are not abundant enough to modify the effect of the 

 others which always remind me of one line of Omar's: 

 "star-scattered on the grass." 



Just before camp I ran across the same lone Nakuru 

 hartebeeste I had seen in the morning, and warned by 



