ACROSS THE MAU ESCARPMENT 67 
a buffalo, wounded and followed it, literally on hands and 
knees, and the buffalo made no more trouble than the lioness. 
I am glad my friend has gone back to lands where savage 
game is not to be had, for he would end by being killed 
most surely. That sort of luck is dangerous. 
In spite of the unfortunate engineer’s experience, all 
along the railroad line lions are still far from uncommon, 
as the skins offered to passengers prove. The lions of Tsavo 
are famous. And near Voi, one hundred miles from the 
sea, Mr. Buxton, accompanied by his daughter, had to 
ring his bicycle bell at one of them, he says, to make it 
leave the road. 
On the Athi plains near Nairobi, and round Donyea 
Sabuk mountain, I suppose more than two hundred lions 
have been shot. At Naivasha and Nakura they may be 
heard any night, and several are shot each year in both 
these localities. Here, lately, herdsmen are taking up land, 
and where herdsmen come lions are rightfully doomed. 
They are to them vermin of a dangerous order, and if rifle 
cannot reach them, poison can. 
On the Mau escarpment some splendid dark-maned 
specimens are occasionally shot. The cold of that high 
region seems to result in a heavier and blacker mane than 
lions generally grow. But the farmer is there in force. 
Now that the Mau is passed, all settlement is left behind. 
The farmer and cattle owner have not yet taken possession 
of this wonderfully fertile country. Game abounds, and 
lion till quite lately have had things all their own way. 
Till three years ago this country was a closed district. 
No sportsmen or settlers were allowed to enter the land. 
The Nandi* war was in progress, and sefari would have 
* The Nandi, a large tribe akin to the Massai, and always at war with them, could not resist the 
temptation offered them by the scarcely guarded railroad that ran through the middle of their territory. 
Here was an opportunity to provide themselves with very superior quality of iron for their broad spear 
heads. Spikes were to be had for the taking. If an unfortunate Indian track walker raised a protest 
nothing was easier than to test the temper of the new spear head on him. So the Nandi treated the 
road as a convenient iron mine till, remonstrances proving useless, they had to be thrashed. 
