CARAVAN LIFE 



21 



The animals were placed for the night in the customary penfold, 

 outside the fort. Next morning we found that hyaenas had 

 carried off two of the sheep, badly lacerated a third which 

 we had to kill on the spot, and wounded a fourth. One such 

 lesson serves a lifetime not to trust to any enclosure offering 

 a single weak point to a possible nocturnal visit from these 

 marauders. 



One of the pleasures held out by caravan life consists in 

 culling rare flowers and collecting plants new to science. 

 Some men, as the explorer Teleki expressed it to me, have a 



A SPOTTED HY/ENA. 



lucky hand. He gathered, more or less accidentally, one day 

 on the march a handful of plants most of which were un- 

 known. But it is not necessary to be a botanist to admire 

 the trees and flowers of Tropical Africa. 



Take, for instance, the euphorbia-tree, sure to be met with 

 pretty often along the caravan route. The specimen shown in 

 the illustration grew by the roadside between Kitanwa and 

 Kibero. Its majestic dimensions can be estimated by a glance 

 at the group sheltering underneath it. The whole of my 

 caravan were gathered under it, though they are hidden by 

 the patch of grass which was six to eight feet high. In some 

 parts of the Protectorate the euphorbia furnishes the only 

 firewood procurable, as every traveller through the western 

 parts of Kavirondo soon finds out. It is a poor sort of fuel, 



