VIEW OF KILIMANJARO ii 



eagerly for a glimpse of Mount Kenya, but there 

 was nothing to be seen save great banks of cloud, 

 where the mountain lay hid. 



A few miles before we arrived at Nairobi, the 

 train was kept waiting to take up a small caravan, 

 which was seen hurriedly approaching from a mile 

 or so away. The party consisted of three blood- 

 stained Europeans and a dozen or more equally 

 blood-stained native porters, carrying on their heads 

 loads of antelope meat. The porters perched 

 themselves somewhere on various outside parts of 

 the train, and the Europeans and the loads of meat 

 were crammed into the compartment where I 

 happened to be. They brought with them a cloud 

 of flies such as no mortal Pharaoh could have 

 tolerated for long, and I think we were all of us 

 glad enough when this stage of the journey came to 

 an end. So far as I could gather, they were 

 prospective settlers, who had been in the country 

 for some time waiting for land to be allotted to 

 them ; they had spent a good deal of their capital 

 in doing nothing for many months in a very 

 expensive place, and, in order to save what 

 remained, they shot game, the meat of which they 

 sold to residents in Nairobi, and the heads and 

 horns to tourists. 



From these people, and from many others of the 

 same kind whom I met in a few days spent at 

 Nairobi and Naivasha, I heard all sorts of expres- 

 sions of opinion, from the gloomiest to the most 



