CHAPTER XI 

 FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 



A FEW hours after the head of the sefari has turned 

 north from little Gilgil station you are among the 

 pretty wooded hills that gather round the base of Gojito, 

 13,000 feet high. 



As you press still northward the splendid Aberdare 

 range rises abruptly to your right hand. It begins with 

 Kinan Kop (also over 13,000 feet) and prolongs itself in 

 fine forest ridges that slope to the plain at the northern 

 end of Embellossett swamp. 



Four or five miles after leaving the railway, the trail 

 crosses a plateau that commands a view behind and beyond 

 you that is worth remembering. 



Blue Naivasha Lake lies twenty miles to the southward, 

 in the heart of the great Rift Valley, that strange, long 

 crack in the shrinking earth crust, that only ends far to 

 northward, where the Jordan Valley falls sharply to its 

 Dead Sea. Beyond the lake two extinct craters cut the 

 sky line, Longanot and Suswa. To east of it are the purple 

 crests of the Kikuyu range. To westward the tumbled 

 masses of the Mau across which we made our way to 

 reach Nzoia. 



As we marched northward all the beautiful land before 

 us looks as little like Africa as can be imagined. Were 

 it not for the striped skin of a zebra showing now and 

 then as we mount some grassy rise or descend some deep 

 dell with running water at its foot, we might fancy our- 

 selves among the Tennessee mountains. But leave the 

 trail a short way, try and mount these great purple ridges 



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