166 IN AFRICA 







were on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, near where it 

 merges into the lower slopes of Mount Elgon. The 

 first and the fourth experiences were terrifying 

 ones, never to be forgotten. An Englishman, if he 

 were to describe them, would say "they were rather 

 nasty, you know," which indicates how really seri- 

 ous they were. The second and the third experi- 

 ences were interesting, but not particularly dan- 

 gerous. 



Mount Kenia is a great motherly mountain that 

 spreads over an immense area and raises its snow- 

 capped peaks over eighteen thousand feet above 

 the equator. The lower slopes are as beautiful as a 

 park and are covered with the fields and the herds of 

 the prosperous Kikuyus and other tribes. Scores 

 of native villages of varying sizes are picturesquely 

 planted among the banana groves and wooded val- 

 leys on this lower slope, each with its local chief, or 

 sultan, and each tribe with its head sultan. 



In a day's "trek" one meets many sultans with 

 their more or less naked retinues, and every one of 

 them spits on his hand, presses it to his forehead, and 

 shakes hands with you. It is the form of greeting 

 among the Kikuyus, and, in my opinion, might be 

 improved. These people lead a happy pastoral life 

 amid surroundings of exceptional beauty. Above 

 the cultivated sTiambas, or fields of sweet potatoes 

 and tobacco and sugar and groves of bananas, comes 

 a strip of low bush country. It is a mile or two 

 wide, scarcely ten feet high, and so dense that noth- 

 ing but an elephant could force its way through the 



