130 IN AFRICA 



dence, for this is a section of the country that has 

 suffered much from native uprisings during the last 

 few years. We called on the solitary white resident 

 one evening, and, true to the creed of the Briton, he 

 had dressed for dinner. The sight of a man in a 

 dinner-coat miles from a white man and leagues 

 from a white woman was something to remember 

 and marvel at. 



Northward from Eldoma Ravine for days we 

 marched, sometimes in dense forests so thick that 

 a man could scarcely force himself through the 

 undergrowth that flanked the trail, and sometimes 

 through upland meadows so deep in tall yellow 

 grass as to suggest a field of waving grain, then 

 through miles of country studded with the gnarled 

 thorn tree that looks so much like our apple trees 

 at home. It was as though we were traversing an 

 endless orchard, clean, beautiful, and exhilarating 

 in the cool winds of the African highlands. And 

 then, all suddenly, we came to the end of the trees, 

 and before us, like a great, heaving yellow sea, lay 

 the Guas Ngishu Plateau that stretches northward 

 one hundred miles and always above seven thousand 

 feet in altitude. 



Far ahead, like a little knob of blue, was Ser- 

 goi Hill, forty miles away, and beyond, in a fainter 

 blue, were the hills that mark the limit of white 

 man's passport. On the map that district is marked : 

 "Natives probably treacherous." Off to the left, 

 a hundred miles away, the dim outline of Mount 

 Elgon rose in easy slopes from the horizon. Elgon, 



