144 THE LAND OF THE LION 
Accustom yourself to sleeping always under a net. 
All good tents, and there are none better in the world than 
Edgington’s, 2 Duke Street, London Bridge, have strings 
so arranged that your net doesn’t close down on you; take 
an extra net with you, they will tear and stretch, and they 
weigh nothing. You may not notice many mosquitoes 
when you camp, but round you, are lying, some scores of 
men, whose blood, in very many cases, is infected with the 
malarial microbe — one “‘Anopheles” will do the business; 
and even a slight attack of fever is a nuisance, and may 
seriously spoil your trip. There are, too, many sorts of 
flying and crawling things that seem to let themselves 
loose in the night. Inside a well-set net, you are free from 
them. The only night visitor that thoroughly defeated 
me was arat. He crawled inside my net and gnawed my 
ear, till he awoke me. I clapped my hand to my head, 
when he ran down my back. I had a bad scare then, for I 
feared a snake, and could only shout for John, and tear my 
clothes off. We never caught him, after all. When you 
are in Massai land, and mosquitoes are rare, you will often, 
during the day time, take tobacco, books, writing mate- 
rials — everything — into your bed, and there and there 
only, escape the crawling, sticking, greasy, housefly, that in 
thousands and thousands literally tries to eat you, during 
the sunny hours. 
After the rains are over, in the lower country, every 
second blade of long, strong, green grass, supports, near 
its crown, a tick, some so small you can scarcely see them, 
some lusty and flat. They crawl into the creases of your 
clothes, up your legs, and down your back, and are a very 
serious drawback to any enjoyment, whatever. Their 
bite is irritating, to all,and highly poisonous, to some. Where 
they are bad, horses die from their persecution, unless the 
poor beasts are constantly and carefully freed from them. 
I hunted once, on the Athi River, for three weeks, in May. 
