i 4 2 THE LAND OF THE LION 



men are as careless as children, and even a nine-foot crock 

 can take a man down and drown him. 



When I came to the country first, the cool water, when 

 I could find it, after the hot day, was a temptation not to 

 be resisted. One evening I went to bathe in a brown pool, 

 overhung by a broad-limbed fig tree, on the Athi River. I 

 sat myself down in a bend of the lower branch, arranged my 

 clothes and towels, and dropped quietly into about five feet of 

 water. I landed on a rough sort of rock, as it seemed, and 

 was proceeding to duck my head, when the rock began to 

 move away! I made the jump of my life, back to where 

 my clothes were. I never went into a river since, unless I 

 had to swim or ford it with mule or horse, and then was 

 careful to see what sort of "sign" the bank showed above 

 and below. One of the settlers living on Donyea Sabuk, 

 near Narobi, told me a few days ago that one of his "boys" 

 had been taken by a crocodile, while washing clothes in the 

 stream, quite near the place where I had my own start- 

 ling experience. My moving platform may, of course, have 

 been a large river tortoise, but I did not wait to make sure. 

 There is nothing in all Africa so repulsive to my mind as a 

 "crock."* The Athi, I found afterward, is full of 

 crocodiles. 



It is well to wash hands and face in warm water, soon 

 as you return to camp, especially when you have been hunt- 

 ing, crawling in grass, brushing through scrub, handling 

 live or dead game, you constantly touch many kinds of 

 poisonous plants, thorns, and insects. The juices of sev- 

 eral common creepers are highly poisonous, and a hand 

 soiled by them, drawn across a sweating forehead, or 



* Crocodiles are often very destructive to native life. But this is so cheaply held that small account 

 is taken of its loss. The native women themselves, who are chief sufferers, are most careless of all. 

 One hideous maneater, made his haunt near a shallow, where the women came to do their washing. 

 A railroad bridge spanned the little river there and under its shadow the evil monster lay in wait. A 

 friend of mine saw a woman taken down there one day. He assured me that within half an hour all 

 her companions were back, washing in the same place, spite of all he could say. After much difficulty 

 he had that "crock" snared. And out of its belly he took twenty-four pounds weight of womens 

 bangles! The beast must have eaten more than thirty persons. 



