144 THE LAND OF THE LION 



Accustom yourself to sleeping always under a net. 

 All good tents, and there are none better in the world than 

 Edgington's, 2 Duke Street, London Bridge, have strings 

 so arranged that your net doesn't close down on you; take 

 an extra net with you, they will tear and stretch, and they 

 weigh nothing. You may not notice many mosquitoes 

 when you camp, but round you, are lying, some scores of 

 men, whose blood, in very many cases, is infected with the 

 malarial microbe one "Anopheles" will do the business; 

 and even a slight attack of fever is a nuisance, and may 

 seriously spoil your trip. There are, too, many sorts of 

 flying and crawling things that seem to let themselves 

 loose in the night. Inside a well-set net, you are free from 

 them. The only night visitor that thoroughly defeated 

 me was a rat. He crawled inside my net and gnawed my 

 ear, till he awoke me. I clapped my hand to my head, 

 when he ran down my back. I had a bad scare then, for I 

 feared a snake, and could only shout for John, and tear my 

 clothes off. We never caught him, after all. When you 

 are in Massai land, and mosquitoes are rare, you will often, 

 during the day time, take tobacco, books, writing mate- 

 rials everything into your bed, and there and there 

 only, escape the crawling, sticking, greasy, housefly, that in 

 thousands and thousands literally tries to eat you, during 

 the sunny hours. 



After the rains are over, in the lower country, every 

 second blade of long, strong, green grass, supports, near 

 its crown, a tick, some so small you can scarcely see them, 

 some lusty and flat. They crawl into the creases of your 

 clothes, up your legs, and down your back, and are a very 

 serious drawback to any enjoyment, whatever. Their 

 bite is irritating, to all, and highly poisonous, to some. Where 

 they are bad, horses die from their persecution, unless the 

 poor beasts are constantly and carefully freed from them. 

 I hunted once, on the Athi River, for three weeks, in May. 



