XXI 

 RIDING THE PLAINS 



FROM the mere point of view of lions, lion 

 hunting was very slow work indeed. It meant 

 riding all of long days, from dawn until dark, 

 investigating miles of country that looked all alike 

 and in which we seemed to get nowhere. One by 

 one the long billows of plain fell behind, until our 

 camphill had turned blue behind us, and we seemed 

 to be out in illimitable space, with no possibility, 

 in an ordinary lifetime, of ever getting in touch 

 with anything again. What from above had looked 

 as level as a floor now turned into a tremendously 

 wide and placid ground swell. As a consequence 

 we were always going imperceptibly up and up and 

 up to a long-delayed skyline, or tipping as gently 

 down the other side of the wave. From crest to 

 crest of these long billows measured two or three 

 miles. The vertical distance in elevation from 

 trough to top was perhaps not over fifty to one- 

 hundred feet. 



Slowly we rode along the shallow grass and brush 



164 



