62 THE LAND OF THE LION 



into the level country to the west and southwest. This 

 is Nandi land, or rather, the eastern border of the Nandi, 

 who all over the wide plain are looking down on their cruel 

 raiders who came and went till three or four years ago. 

 Further to the north of Elgon faint blue mountain tops 

 can just be seen against the sky: Mount Debasien and the 

 Suk Mountains, these last very high and as yet unsurveyed. 



Now turn to eastward. Eight or ten miles off the purple 

 line of the forest comes down to the grass land then rises 

 over a wide plateau to the base of another steep mountain 

 chain also running to the north, not so high as Elgon evi- 

 dently, but no one has yet measured its exact altitude 

 (almost all African altitudes, even that of Kenia, are still 

 debatable points). On the map this chain is called Chip- 

 charanguani; why no one knows, least of all the natives 

 who live among these mountains. None of them were 

 ever guilty of so monstrous a name. They all contentedly 

 called it, and themselves, Cherangang. This range pro- 

 longs itself in a very wilderness of high mountainous coun- 

 try, bordering the Turkwell River, which flows into Lake 

 Rudolph. These mountains to the east and north are the 

 home of four small but independent peoples who, like other 

 mountaineers, have held their own bravely against their 

 far mightier neighbours of the plain. From some of them 

 I learned later many interesting things. 



Having looked all around it, look now at the lower 

 country, where sefaris come to hunt, and Boers are crowd- 

 ing to settle. For many miles from the base of the hill, 

 the plain is unusually flat and the grass is cropped short 

 by game herds that continually browse it. 



To the west a dull green line, eight miles away, that 

 bends and curves gradually among the low swells of the 

 veldt, marks a ten mile long papyrus swamp, through which, 

 the river you camped by yesterday, flows. As you look 

 you can scarcely believe it. But here rivers twist, in a 



