THE LAST SEFARI 423 
white man to see Kenia, December 3, 1849. The great 
explorer, Joseph Thompson, whose statue Sir Harry John- 
son well says should stand at the gateway of the land he 
toiled and suffered so much to explore, saw Kenia next. 
He came across the Aberdare and saw it from the west, 
and had the same view that I had of the upper battlements 
of the mountain, gleaming forth above the dense cloud bank 
that blots out all sign of the massive sweeping base. 
In the evening, just before sunset, Kenia is often so seen. 
In the hot weather the heavy forest land round the moun- 
tain base breeds a perpetual fog bank. The colour of the 
cloudy mass mingles with and merges inthe plain. None 
would fancy that behind it a great Alp lay hidden. The 
upper cloud strata thin out and part about five-thirty o’clock, 
especially if the evening is still; suddenly you lift your eyes 
from the ground, as you trudge homeward, and the glorious 
vision is vouchsafed to you. Ice, snow, rock, all glorified 
by the setting sun; marvelous, spirit-like, divine, cut off, 
as It were, by immeasurable distance, from all contact with 
the gross earth. Thompson says: ‘‘ Kenia was to me what 
the sacred stone of Mecca is to the faithful who have wan- 
dered from distant lands, surmounted perils and hardships 
that they might kiss or see the beloved object, and then if 
it were God’s will, die.” 
I had not yet bagged a buffalo. I had, as I have tried 
to tell elsewhere, worked hard and often for one, but in 
vain. JI had camped on the borderland of a forest country 
where they were most abundant; but the bad management 
of my friend’s professional hunter, who asserted that he 
knew the country thoroughly, when he did not know it at 
all, had resulted in our sefari being tied fast for ten days, 
while all the men had to make a journey of more than 
seventy miles to get food. Such contretemps will happen. 
You will pass close to a place where the very beasts you 
are most anxious to secure are easily found, and if you do 
