THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



tracks. Nevertheless we decided to explore a short 

 distance. 



For an hour we walked among high thornbushes, 

 over baking hot earth. We saw two or three dik- 

 dik and one of the giraffes. By that time it had be- 

 come very hot, and the sun was bearing down on us 

 as with the weight of a heavy hand. The air had 

 the scorching, blasting quality of an opened furnace 

 door. Our mouths were getting dry and sticky in 

 that peculiar stage of thirst on which no luke-warm 

 canteen water in necessarily limited quantity has 

 any effect. So we turned back, picked up the men 

 with the waterbuck, and plodded on down the little 

 stream, or, rather, on the red-hot dry valley bot- 

 tom outside the stream's course, to where the syces 

 were waiting with our horses. We mounted with 

 great thankfulness. It was now eleven o'clock, and 

 we considered our day as finished. 



The best way for a distance seemed to follow the 

 course of the tributary stream to its point of junc- 

 tion with our river. We rode along, rather relaxed 

 in the suffocating heat. F. was nearest the stream. 

 At one point it freed itself of trees and brush and 

 ran clear, save for low papyrus, ten feet down below 

 a steep eroded bank. F. looked over and uttered a 

 startled exclamation. I spurred my horse forward 

 to see. 



112 



