232 THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 



Marched by a good native path four and a half hours 

 through passes in broken, hilly country, and emerged 

 on a wide grass plain surrounded by mountains, with 

 a remarkably rocky single peak in the middle of it. 

 Many herds of wildebeeste, zebra, and topi grazed in 

 the open, and from above we could see countless sav- 

 ages, singly and in numbers, trekking back and forth 

 across it. 



In the path we came across some very curious "medi- 

 cine," to which all our boys gave a wide berth — first, an 

 old cooking pot, then some ashes, then crossed sticks, 

 a hoe, and a knife, strung out for ten feet or more. 

 Memba Sasa said it was intended to kill an enemy, but 

 Cuninghame kicked it all aside and saved some one 's 

 life, to everybody's open horror. 



Near the rocky single peak I cut off to get meat, 

 while the safari went on to find water and make camp. 

 Got a topi with two shots at 250 and 200 yards; and an- 

 other at 234. As we are now nearing the lake and have 

 plenty of carriers, I tried for a desired wildebeeste head, 

 but here all seem to be cows and calves.* 



Had some difficulty in locating camp, so went up to 

 a native village for information, and was met by the 

 finest savage ever. He was a very big man, with a 

 slanting feather in his topknot, armlets and necklace 

 with danglers, a little square of goatskin edged with 



* In this and the three other big park-like plains in the vicinity this was 

 true. The bulls were elsewhere. Curiously enough there seemed to be no 

 lions hereabouts. One would think they would follow the young calves. 



