ELEPHANT HUNTING 277 



jungle, the trees laced together by creepers, many of them 

 brilliant in their bloom. The climbing morning-glories 

 sometimes completely covered a tree with their pale-purple 

 flowers; and other blossoming vines spangled the green over 

 which their sprays were flung with masses of bright yellow. 



Four days' march from Naivasha, Where we again left 

 Mearns and Loring, took us to Neri. Our line of march 

 lay across the high plateaus and mountain chains of the 

 Aberdare range. The steep, twisting trail was slippery with 

 mud. Our last camp, at an altitude of about ten thousand 

 feet, was so cold that the water froze in the basins, and 

 the shivering porters slept in numbed discomfort. There 

 was constant fog and rain, and on the highest plateau the 

 bleak landscape, shrouded in driving mist, was northern to 

 all the senses. The ground was rolling, and through the 

 deep valleys ran brawling brooks of clear water; one little 

 foaming stream, suddenly tearing down a hill-side, might 

 have been that which Childe Roland crossed before he 

 came to the dark tower. 



There was not much game, and it generally moved abroad 

 by night. One frosty evening we killed a duiker by shin- 

 ing its eyes. We saw old elephant tracks. The high, wet 

 levels swarmed with mice and shrews, just as our arctic 

 and alpine meadows swarm with them. The species were 

 really widely different from ours, but many of them showed 

 curious analogies in form and habits; there was a short- 

 tailed shrew much like our mole shrew, and a long-haired, 

 short-tailed rat like a very big meadov/ mouse. They were 

 so plentiful that we frequently saw them, and the grass 

 was cut up by their runways. They were abroad during 

 the day, probably finding the nights too cold, and in an 

 hour Heller trapped a dozen or two individuals belonging 

 to seven species and five different genera. There were 

 not many birds so high up. There were deer ferns; and 

 Spanish moss hung from the trees and even from the bam- 

 boos. The flowers included utterly strange forms, as for 

 instance giant lobelias ten feet high. Others we know 



