FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 279 



As the sun mounted overhead, and the warmth pen- 

 etrated the tangle overhanging the water, shrubs and 

 flowers filled the air with pungent, aromatic scent, the 

 smell of Africa's rainy season. 



Down to the left bank of the river, grew an impenetrable 

 euphorbia wood that clothed for miles the slopes on that 

 side, and straight out of its gray-green mass rose one 

 of those precipitous hills, too high to be called kopje yet 

 scarcely a mountain. Up its rocky sides the all-conquering 

 jungle had won its way, tearing at it, as it were, till the hill 

 seemed to own nothing of itself but its crown, one splendid 

 mass of red granite, which, clear and bold and quite bare 

 of any shrub or greenery, looked full at the rising sun 

 and in its early light shone a rosy red. In most of the 

 woods of East Africa there is surprisingly little colour, as 

 there is surprisingly little flower or fruit; everything in 

 the vegetable world seems on the defensive, has all it can 

 do to live, and has no time to be beautiful. But our little 

 river seemed to have won for the gentler things some space 

 and chance to twine and grow. White and purple con- 

 volvuli hung from the wide-spread, cedar-like arms of 

 the thorn trees, far over the yellow water, and swept down 

 nearly to its surface. As they swayed in the morning air 

 more beautiful and fragrant wreathes of colour one could 

 not wish to see. 



Then the thorn tree, one of the hundred species of 

 thorny mimosa here, was partially in flower, and when 

 the mimosa tree flowers there is always the tireless African 

 bee, surely one of the most cruelly used insects in the world. 

 He has no winter time in which to rest and recuperate 

 but toils all the long hot year around, and when his hardly 

 won store is discovered by the keen-eyed native, aided by 

 the honey bird, wood smoke does too quickly its deadly 

 work, and grub, drone and worker all perish together. 



In these thorn trees hung on all sides N'dorobo honey 



