HUNTING ELEPHANT AND RIDING LION 173 
been quite undisturbed. No shot has alarmed the wary 
monarch of the plain. Here there are more lions than in 
the same extent of country anywhere. Far more! They 
abound near Laikipia where we have been hunting, but there 
the riding is not nearly so safe nor the going so fast. There 
are not only more holes, but the ground is soft, for long 
stretches of a mile at a time. [Jt is black and sticky, too, 
in parts when it rains, and when the rains are over, the 
same black soil, baked by the sun, cakes to a bricky hard- 
ness, and as it has been much trampled by game, the sur- 
face is often exceedingly rough, making it dangerous riding. 
On the famous Athi plains, near Nairobi, the black soil 
is a veritable gumbo, and wild pig and badger holes are so 
common, that in many places fast riding is impossible. 
Here the going is superb; not, of course, over the whole 
plateau, but, just by good fortune, in that comparatively 
small part of it, round the Rock. Some eight miles to east 
of Sergoit is a long papyrus swamp, surrounded for many 
miles, on all sides, by plain. ‘The soil is rich, the grass sweet 
and strong. The game herds seem, for their mutual pro- 
tection, to have made an agreement to meet after the rain 
on this wide prairie land, and to graze it down and keep, 
it down. I say for their mutual protection, for in the long 
grass that soon after the rains covers the low lands bor- 
dering the Nzoia, and also clothes all the country across 
that river, both lion and N’dorobo can work their will on 
the larger antelope and the zebra. Neither of these dire 
enemies of the game find much difficulty in crawling within 
a few yards of their prey, sheltered as they are by the dense 
growth of long grass. From that distance the lion makes 
his terrible rush, and the wild man speeds his deadly poisoned 
arrow. As the grass lengthens, the larger herds of game 
leave the lower country for the tableland on which we are 
hunting, seemingly knowing well, that on it, they are in 
comparative safety. The N’dorobo. kill little game on the 
