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AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



At this camp I presented the porters with twenty-five 

 sheep, as a recognition of their good conduct and hard work; 

 whereupon they improvised long chants in my honor, and 

 feasted royally. 



We spent one entire day with the row-boat in a series 

 of lagoons near camp, which marked an inlet of the lake. 

 We did not get any hippo, but it was a most interesting 



Camp at Lake Naivasha 

 From a photograph by Edmund Heller 



day. A broad belt of papyrus fringed the lagoons and 

 jutted out between them. The straight green stalks with 

 their feathery heads rose high and close, forming a mass so 

 dense that it was practically impenetrable save where the 

 huge bulk of the hippos had made tunnels. Indeed, even 

 for the hippos it was not readily penetrable. The green 

 monotony of a papyrus swamp becomes wearisome after a 

 while; yet it is very beautiful, for each reed is tall, slender, 

 graceful, with its pale flowering crown; and they are typ- 

 ical of the tropics, and their mere sight suggests a vertical 

 sun and hot, steaming swamps, where great marsh beasts 

 feed and wallow and bellow, amidst a teeming reptilian life. 



