\Yith Flashlight and Rifle -+ 



indescribably violent electric manifestations, soon strikes 

 terror into the camp, and does great injury in a very short 

 space of time. No matter how often it is endured, 

 this particular experience never loses its terror the 

 threatening bank of rain-clouds that comes with the 

 falling of darkness ; the Hashes of lightning and sudden 

 gusts of wind ; the roaring torrents of rain that flood the 

 camp, drowning in a trice all our poultry and the young 

 animals of the herds we have brought with us ; the 

 shivering and halt-benumbed men, scarcely sheltered by 

 their meagre tents, cowering miserably on the ground ! 



I remember one such night of tropical storm in British 

 East Africa. It was on the watershed between the 

 Victoria Xyanza and the country which drains into the 

 Indian Ocean ; therefore at a considerable height above 

 the sea. 



And that time there was combined with the fury of 

 the unchained elements the anxiety which is awakened 

 in the traveller by a precarious situation in a hostile 

 neighbourhood. A revolt of the hill-folk was endangering 



o o o 



the caravan-road, which, since those days, has been 

 replaced by railways. 



The British Government was then, as now, concerned 

 only with the security of this caravan-road, and, naturally 

 enough, took little notice of what was happening else- 

 where in the country round about a sage measure, since 

 the maintenance of order, in the European sense of the 

 word, would require innumerable soldiers and officials ! 



The officer commanding the fort of Xandi could 

 only allow me from there eight Sudanese Askaris as a 



670 



