60 THE LAND OF THE LION 



Fifty miles of these green rolling hills and downs, with 

 the stately forest ever bordering them, on your right, you 

 must pass before you reach "the rock." On these fine 

 uplands there is little to remind you, but the waving clumps 

 of feathery bamboo, dearly loved of the elephants, that 

 you are travelling not only in the tropics, but almost under 

 the Equator. 



. Great beds of bracken, and on the higher slopes, masses 

 of flowering heather, grow luxuriantly at the feet of the 

 bamboo; and in some places thickets of a thorny bush 

 exactly like our blackberry, but bearing luscious yellow 

 fruit (the only good wild fruit I tasted in Africa) are found. 



The nights up here are bitterly cold, the altitude is over 

 8,000 feet, and many of the porters are sure to be suffer- 

 ing and ill. In the evenings there is not as much singing and 

 dancing as usual. The men cower over their fires, and you 

 sit in a heavy overcoat near your own. I found the air 

 most invigourating, and if I could fancy ever making a real 

 home in Africa, and I think very few Europeans can, here 

 is the place. 



There is but little game. An occasional hyena and, 

 very rarely, a lion may be heard at night. African game, 

 like African natives, seems to dislike the cold. Leopards 

 are numerous, as their tracks tell, but you never see one. 

 The Colobus monkey, late in the evening and very early in 

 the morning, utters from the forest border his extraordinary 

 cry like a coffee-mill quickly grinding. But this land, 

 though rich and beautiful, is as yet lonely, and still awaits, 

 undeveloped, the coming of the white man's plough and 

 herds. 



The second day's march from the boma brought us to the 

 head waters of the Kerio River, a sort of watery dividing 

 line between the streams flowing east and those we are 

 soon to camp on, all of which empty themselves into Lake 

 Victoria. The Kerio has a long and a lonely way to go. 



