THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



she heard a noise outside. Slipping on a warm wrap 

 and seizing her trusty revolver she stole out on the 

 veranda to investigate. She looked over the ve- 

 randa rail. There just below her, trampling the 

 flower beds, tracking the gravel walks, endangering 

 the sundial, stood a hippopotamus! 



We had neighbours six or seven miles away. At 

 times they came down to spend the night and 

 luxuriate in the comforts of civilization. They 

 were a Lady A., and her nephew, and a young Scotch 

 acquaintance the nephew had taken into partner- 

 ship. They had built themselves circular houses of 

 papyrus reeds with conical thatched roofs and earth 

 floors, had purchased ox teams and gathered a dozen 

 or so Kikuyus, and were engaged in breaking a farm 

 in the wilderness. The life was rough and hard, and 

 Lady A. and her nephew gently bred, but they seemed 

 to be having quite cheerfully the time of their lives. 

 The game furnished them meat, as it did all of us, 

 and they hoped in time that their labours would 

 make the land valuable and productive. Fascinat- 

 ing as was the life, it was also one of many depriva- 

 tions. At Juja were a number of old copies of Life^ 

 the pretty girls in which so fascinated the young men 

 that we broke the laws of propriety by presenting 

 them, though they did not belong to us. C, the 

 nephew, was of the finest type of young Englishman, 



402 



