OUR FIRST HUNTING EXPEDITION 



we had ascended. We ran down, passing a lot of 

 monkeys, nearly to the bottom, where we camped 

 on a very pleasant spot, not far from an old Kikuyu 

 encampment of about seven grass huts built in the 

 shrubs and around trees. It was such a pretty 

 place, I wandered off to take photographs of the 

 stream running at the bottom of a cleft in the 

 escarpment, and I came across a large hollow 

 cavern evidently much used by natives as a resting 

 place, when they were on the move, as it was ab- 

 solutely black inside from their fires. Later on I 

 took my husband to see the cave, and we found it 

 occupied by a party of Kikuyu, with their fires 

 already burning. Wandering back we came across 

 another piece of rock, jutting out, with a heavy bit 

 above forming a roof ; this had also been used for 

 the same purpose, and as we were looking down, a 

 native came along carrying a bundle of firewood, 

 and passed under the roof and over the wide stream 

 below, by a fallen tree-trunk, after which he had a 

 stiff little piece to climb. As we watched him in 

 the stillness from our superior height of thirty feet, 

 I suppose, although we were motionless, he must 

 have felt our eyes, as he looked up, with however 

 no surprise at seeing a white woman in that unac- 

 customed spot (for are we not all a little mad, ac- 

 cording to them ?) and we exchanged grins. That 

 evening one of the porters came to me with a very 

 badly scalded leg, which I dressed for him. Our old 



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