A DRAMATIC EPISODE 295 



you were filled with such distrust and suspicion that 

 you would hardly believe him if he said he thought 

 it was going to rain, or that crops were looking up. 



With this man as a guide, and with four more 

 who were tempted by the bright red blankets we 

 gave, our caravan started on one of the strangest 

 and perhaps most foolhardy trips that presumably 

 sane people ever made. In the first place, probably 

 fewer than half a dozen white men had ever as- 

 cended Mount Elgon. There were no adequate 

 maps of the region, and the one we had was woe- 

 fully inaccurate. It was made as if from tele- 

 graphic description, and the only thing in which it 

 proved trustworthy was that there was a mountain 

 there and that it was about fourteen thousand two 

 hundred feet high, and that the line separating 

 British East Africa from Uganda ran through the 

 crater at the top. 



Our delay at the Ketosh village had greatly re- 

 duced our food supplies for the porters, and there 

 was only enough left to last six days. In that time 

 we should have to ascend the mountain and descend 

 to some place where food supplies could be pro- 

 cured. It all looked quite quixotic. We bought 

 two bullocks, a sheep, and a goat, and, with our 

 guides ahead, our entire safari of over a hundred 

 souls turned toward the grim heights that shot up 

 before us. 



The trail for the first thousand feet of ascent was 

 steep and hard to climb. The rocks high above us 

 were specked with natives, who gazed down in won- 



