With Flashlight and Rifle * 



there. This enterprising man had reared an imposing 

 stock of birds in one year, and had achieved much 

 more in this short period than the Ostrich Farm- 

 ing Company, which, owing to bad management, has 

 no profits to show for all these years, with large means 

 at their disposal. 



A long march brought our caravan next to the Rombo 

 plantation, the scene of the murder of Dr. Lent and 

 Dr. Kretschmer in 1894. How long will it be before 

 numbers of other such calamities, here and everywhere 

 in our colonies, bring it home to us that it is only 

 possible to establish a civilised administration, in our 

 sense of the term, over such regions, when we can sup- 

 port it by an adequate number of troops and police, 

 maintained in every corner of it at a correspondingly 

 enormous expense ? 



From Rombo we proceeded through dense banana 

 groves, by narrow shady paths, to Useri, where the Mangi 

 (chief) Mambua generously provided me with beans, and 

 where we had to strike camp in the middle of a banana 

 plantation. 



This Useri district, with its winding, intricate, densely 

 shaded paths and banana-plantations, is still little known. 

 Its inhabitants are shy and retiring, and water is so scanty 

 here that they can only get it from the banana stalks. 



More long marches followed now. We crossed the 

 Ngare-Rongai (of which the water was icy cold and most 

 excellent), and presently I got to the Njiri swamps by 

 way of the watering-place Marago-Kanga. 



These swamps are called Ngare-O'Ssiram by the Masai, 



86 



