MOMBASSA TO LION LAND 9 
Here and there streams tinkle far below, as a viaduct 
lifts you above the tree-tops standing massed together 
in some dark ravine. From a high embankment you see 
right in among the straight forest stems, and can mark 
the massy green herbage that mounts up and up them, 
throwing stout climbing ladders over the wide spreading 
lower boughs. 
Were you on foot, the upper world of the lJand that 
lies now all open to you would be completely or almost 
completely hidden, and your path would twist amid dark 
and damp herbage, that, arching far overhead, left you in 
deep shade. Now, in a quarter of an hour you make 
above the forest a progress that on foot would have taken 
you days of heartbreaking struggle. 
You are, indeed, seeing what you may not see again. 
On sefari you will avoid such difficulties —no band of 
stout Wanyamwazi porters you may command could hope 
successfully to struggle with them. Your trail will go 
when need be, many a long mile round, rather than attempt 
the passage of so much as one-half mile of it, unless, for 
some reason, there is no way round, or a road has been 
already cut through. 
For a little while the train now winds in and out amid 
these sombre haunts of the elephant, then, suddenly, as 
you rush round a corner, the glowing, sunlit Rift Valley 
opens right underneath you. The contrast is dazzling. 
Here, indeed, is Africa. Shade so dense that the tropic 
sun never gains an entrance, and sunlight so intense you 
soon want to rest your eyes, and so turn them on the long 
strips of woodland that come tumbling down almost two 
thousand feet to meet the plain. 
The Kedong Valley (it forms the nearer end of the 
great Rift Valley) must be, I think, quite unlike any other 
in the world. To attempt to describe it is beyond any 
modest powers of mine. The cafion of the Yellowstone 
