FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 261 



of the Aberdare, and you soon find yourself not only in 

 Africa but in the face of obstructive Africa, the real. 



These great mountain ridges, near as they are to the 

 one highway of the country, the Uganda Railroad, are 

 practically unknown, almost unexplored. In them still 

 herds of elephants have their retreat and find in their 

 impenetrable bamboo thickets food and shelter so much 

 to their taste, that they seldom visit the plain, or the lower 

 valleys that lead to it. 



Kinan Kop is more accessible, its woodlands are less 

 rugged and compact and shambas stud it here and 

 there. Its elephant herds, too, have been searched for 

 big ivory. But the almost perpendicular ridges of this 

 great escarpment that now rise beyond and to north 

 of you, as well as the density of its forest, have effect- 

 ually barred even the ivory hunter's progress: he has 

 turned away discouraged to seek a more penetrable 

 country where, in shorter time, he can hope to secure 

 two paying "tuskers." 



This is surely a land to invite to leisurely sefarying, 

 and not by any means a country to hurry through. Flowers 

 never classified, birds not even named, find hiding in the 

 sheltered "chines" that slope to the wide marsh land of 

 Embellossett; and weeks might be passed in ascending 

 the unmapped mountain solitudes from which they come. 

 There is game enough for food, and wild fowl in thousands 

 breed safely in the marshes. Here, four years ago, an 

 inexperienced English subaltern saw a fine herd of kongoni 

 and rode after them at top speed. When he and his com- 

 panion got among them they found themselves riding the 

 tail of a band of twenty-four lions. 



In these Aberdare mountains the Guasi Narok, one 

 of the chief streams that make the Guasi Nyiro of the 

 north, has its rise. On this sefari we took it as our guide 

 and followed it down through the Embellossett swamp 



