FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 267 
the turf as smooth as a cricket crease. So the swamp’s 
border is a beautiful thing, an almost level sweep of turf 
that is ever green, which with a very gradual slope goes 
down to meet the solid high upstanding wall of impenetrable 
Papyrus. Impenetrable that wall is, even to the vast 
bulk of the elephant, who will turn aside and make no 
effort to penetrate it or to do more than bathe at its borders. 
The hippo alone, heavy and short-legged, succeeds in 
forcing a path to its dark solitudes. ‘There is his safe 
retreat and home. 
The country around abounds in game, but water is 
scarce. So this green rich water meadow is cropped by the 
very best of nature’s mowing machines which, moreover, as 
it passes nightly over it, except in a few soft places, leaves 
no mark of passing hoof to cut or roughen the level green. 
Here flowers grow abundantly and seem to bloom as 
they do in favourable localities, the whole year round. 
Primrose-coloured sweet little single things, thick low- 
lying patches of African ‘‘for-get-me-not,’ bunches of 
purple salvia, and many another. Here, when now and 
again the flowing water has worn a channel round the foot 
of the papyri wall, and for a little space the brown stream 
widens out in the sunlight, beds of purple water lilies 
are spread, and the shy water birds swim and feed. The 
beautiful white egret and lesser egret are found here. 
Why they and all birds (excepting the wild fowl on 
Embellossett) are so wary I have no idea. It may be 
that the natives have hunted them for food or feathers 
long before the white man came. Whatever the reason 
is, the birds, excepting partridge, quail and snipe are 
strangely wild. 
In the evening you can hear as you stroll quietly round 
the swamp’s edges 
“The river horse as he crushed the reeds 
Beside some hidden stream,” 
