422 THE LAND OF THE LION 
green. But there were many places, down in the pre- 
cipitous hollows, where the searching grass fires always 
seemed to be beaten back, and the long yellow tangle 
still made an impenetrable hiding place for rhino and 
buffalo. 
Among these hills I had made my first bow to African 
game in 1906, and here I now came for my last sefari and 
sad good-bye. 
I advise any one wanting a short trip near Nairobi 
to take his sefari here rather than on to the baked, sticky 
Athe plains, where most go. Here game is much more 
various. The stalking ground is better. There are far 
fewer ticks. And last but not least the scenery is far finer. 
In one morning’s tramp I saw rhone (preserved), water- 
buck, fine, very fine impala, kongoni (Cokes), zebra, 
duiker-buck, oraby (Kenia oraby, a distinct species), 
stein-buck, reed-buck, Chanler’s reed-buck, bush-buck, 
and warthog. I also saw rhino, buffalo, and gnu. 
Think of so great a variety within fifty miles of Nairobi in 
December, 1908, and each and all of them I could, with 
time, have shot. 
The hilly country I write of rises several hundred feet 
above the plateau of Punda Melia, and then growing more 
rocky and broken, tumbles down to the wide Tana valley, 
whose floor is more than two thousand feet lower than the 
Nairobi plain. 
It was from Punda Melia I had first gazed enchanted at 
the grand curve of Kenia with its crown of purest snow. 
I was glad indeed again to look on it from the southern 
side, and compare this view with that from the northern. 
Kenia is a beautiful mountain, looked at from anywhere. 
But impressive as it is when seen from these hills above the 
Tana, the view gives but a poor idea of the lofty grandeur 
of the peaks that face the north. 
Krapf, the heroic German missionary, was the first 
