MOMBASSA TO LION LAND 9 



Here and there streams tinkle far below, as a viaduct 

 lifts you above the tree-tops standing massed together 

 in some dark ravine. From a high embankment you see 

 right in among the straight forest stems, and can mark 

 the massy green herbage that mounts up and up them, 

 throwing stout climbing ladders over the wide spreading 

 lower boughs. 



Were you on foot, the upper world of the land that 

 lies now all open to you would be completely or almost 

 completely hidden, and your path would twist amid dark 

 and damp herbage, that, arching far overhead, left you in 

 deep shade. Now, in a quarter of an hour you make 

 above the forest a progress that on foot would have taken 

 you days of heartbreaking struggle. 



You are, indeed, seeing what you may not see again. 

 On sefari you will avoid such difficulties no band of 

 stout Wanyamwazi porters you may command could hope 

 successfully to struggle with them. Your trail will go 

 when need be, many a long mile round, rather than attempt 

 the passage of so much as one-half mile of it, unless, for 

 some reason, there is no way round, or a road has been 

 already cut through. 



For a little while the train now winds in and out amid 

 these sombre haunts of the elephant, then, suddenly, as 

 you rush round a corner, the glowing, sunlit Rift Valley 

 opens right underneath you. The contrast is dazzling. 

 Here, indeed, is Africa. Shade so dense that the tropic 

 sun never gains an entrance, and sunlight so intense you 

 soon want to rest your eyes, and so turn them on the long 

 strips of woodland that come tumbling down almost two 

 thousand feet to meet the plain. 



The Kedong Valley (it forms the nearer end of the 

 great Rift Valley) must be, I think, quite unlike any other 

 in the world. To attempt to describe it is beyond any 

 modest powers of mine. The canon of the Yellowstone 



