278 THE LAND OF THE LION 
named with Kenia. Such beauty thrills one and I wanted 
to be alone. [ turned aside from my party, and rode off 
to a red granite kopje, climbed up it and sat down. 
The soft clouds thinned out and parted, slowly, gently. 
The misty morning light played on rock and ice and snow. 
The fleecy veils of the night were drawn aside. And 
upper regions, too high and holy for poor man to reach 
and spoil, stood out against heaven’s blue sky. Words 
fail me utterly; I cannot put down what I see, but Words- 
worth’s lines come to my mind, and now I think that a 
little better than ever in my life before, I understand what 
he felt when he wrote it. ‘“‘The holy time is quiet as a 
nun, breathless with adoration.” 
Our path was a plain and easy one to follow, though 
it passed at first through the densest and most impenetrable 
cactus thickets; for no herdsman takes better care of his 
cattle than does the Massai, and the ways by which he 
drives them from pasture to pasture are kept open for 
their use. Along one of these we rode. 
I have said before that rivers in Africa are sullen and 
sluggish things, bordered generally by dense jungle, 
approachable only here and there where the wild beasts 
have chosen their drinking place or their ford. But this 
river might have come from the Wicklow Mountains or 
been born among the fells of Westmoreland. It rushed 
over its water-worn stones, and leaped down the gorge, 
as any old-country salmon stream might; only the smooth 
black polished boulders had an unEnglish look, and spelled 
Africa. 
Then suddenly it would widen and deepen into sullen 
pools, and the current would creep along under the sweeping 
boughs of the thorn and wild fig trees. ‘To these pools, 
in spite of the rapids below them, somehow or other the 
crocodile had made its way, and here and there you saw — 
his marks on boulder and sandbar. 
