FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 261 
of the Aberdare, and you soon find yourself not only in 
Africa but in the face of obstructive Africa, the real. 
These great mountain ridges, near as they are to the 
one highway of the country, the Uganda Railroad, are 
practically unknown, almost unexplored. In them still 
herds of elephants have their retreat and find in their 
impenetrable bamboo thickets food and shelter so much 
to their taste, that they seldom visit the plain, or the lower 
valleys that lead to it. 
Kinan Kop is more accessible, its woodlands are less 
tugged and compact and shambas stud. it here and 
there. Its elephant herds, too, have been searched for 
big ivory. But the almost perpendicular ridges of this 
great escarpment that now rise beyond and to north 
of you, as well as the density of its forest, have effect- 
ually barred even the ivory hunter’s progress: he has 
turned away discouraged to seek a more _ penetrable 
country where, in shorter time, he can hope to secure 
two paying “‘tuskers.” 
This is surely a land to invite to leisurely sefarying, 
and not by any means a country to hurry through. Flowers 
never classified, birds not even named, find hiding in the 
sheltered ‘‘chines” that slope to the wide marsh land of 
Embellossett; and weeks might be passed in ascending 
the unmapped mountain solitudes from which they come. 
There is game enough for food, and wild fowl in thousands 
breed safely in the marshes. Here, four years ago, an 
inexperienced English subaltern saw a fine herd of kongoni 
and rode after them at top speed. When he and his com- 
panion got among them they found themselves riding the 
tail of a band of twenty-four lions. 
In these Aberdare mountains the Guasi Narok, one 
of the chief streams that make the Guasi Nyiro of the 
north, has its rise. On this sefari we took it as our guide 
and followed it down through the Embellossett swamp 
