278 THE LAND OF THE LION 



named with Kenia. Such beauty thrills one and I wanted 

 to be alone. I turned aside from my party, and rode off 

 to a red granite kopje, climbed up it and sat down. 



The soft clouds thinned out and parted, slowly, gently. 

 The misty morning light played on rock and ice and snow. 

 The fleecy veils of the night were drawn aside. And 

 upper regions, too high and holy for poor man to reach 

 and spoil, stood out against heaven's blue sky. Words 

 fail me utterly; I cannot put down what I see, but Words- 

 worth's lines come to my mind, and now I think that a 

 little better than ever in my life before, I understand what 

 he felt when he wrote it. "The holy time is quiet as a 

 nun, breathless with adoration." 



Our path was a plain and easy one to follow, though 

 it passed at first through the densest and most impenetrable 

 cactus thickets; for no herdsman takes better care of his 

 cattle than does the Massai, and the ways by which he 

 drives them from pasture to pasture are kept open for 

 their use. Along one of these we rode. 



I have said before that rivers in Africa are sullen and 

 sluggish things, bordered generally by dense jungle, 

 approachable only here and there where the wild beasts 

 have chosen their drinking place or their ford. But this 

 river might have come from the Wicklow Mountains or 

 been born among the fells of Westmoreland. It rushed 

 over its water-worn stones, and leaped down the gorge, 

 as any old-country salmon stream might; only the smooth 

 black polished boulders had an unEnglish look, and spelled 

 Africa. 



Then suddenly it would widen and deepen into sullen 

 pools, and the current would creep along under the sweeping 

 boughs of the thorn and wild fig trees. To these pools, 

 in spite of the rapids below them, somehow or other the 

 crocodile had made its way, and here and there you saw 

 his marks on boulder and sandbar. 



