348 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



than a mere hunting trip, or even than a voyage of explo- 

 ration, and trebles the labor. 



A long day's march brought us down to the hot country. 

 That evening we pitched our tents by a rapid brook, bor- 

 dered by palms, whose long, stiff fronds rustled ceaselessly 

 in the wind. Monkeys swung in the tree tops. On the 

 march I shot a Kavirondo crane on the wing with the little 

 Springfield, almost exactly repeating my experience with 

 the other crane which I had shot three weeks before, ex- 

 cept that on this occasion I brought down the bird with 

 my third bullet, and then wasted the last two cartridges in 

 the magazine at his companions. At dusk the donkeys 

 were driven to a fire within the camp, and they stood pa- 

 tiently round it in a circle throughout the night, safe from 

 lions and hyenas. 



Next day's march brought us to another small tributary 

 of the Guaso Nyero, a little stream twisting rapidly through 

 the plain, between sheer banks. Here and there it was 

 edged with palms and beds of bulrushes. We pitched the 

 tents close to half a dozen flat-topped thorn-trees. We 

 spent several days at this camp. Many kites came around 

 the tents, but neither vultures nor ravens. The country 

 was a vast plain bounded on almost every hand by chains 

 of far-off mountains. In the south-west, just beyond the 

 equator, the snows of Kenia lifted toward the sky. To the 

 north the barren ranges were grim with the grimness of the 

 desert. The flats were covered with pale, bleached grass 

 which waved all day long in the wind; for though there 

 were sometimes calms, or changes in the wind, on most of 

 the days we were out it never ceased blowing from some 

 point in the south. In places the parched soil was crumbling 

 and rotten; in other places it was thickly strewn with vol- 

 canic stones; there were but few tracts over which a horse 

 could gallop at speed, although neither the rocks nor the 

 rotten soil seemed to hamper the movements of the game. 

 Here and there were treeless stretches. Elsewhere there 

 were occasional palms; and trees thirty or forty feet high, 



