A RIDE THROUGH RHINO COUNTRY 311 



nearly so dense as on the other sides and that a way through 

 it might be found without any extraordinary difficulty. 



On returning to Nairobi what was my chagrin on learning 

 that a surveying party led by Mr. McGregor Ross was, at 

 the very time we were restlessly waiting for our supplies at 

 the foot of the mountain, making its way through the very 

 forest belt that daily I searched with my glasses; and that 

 having done so, they camped on the bare, heathy uplands 

 that rose gradually to snow-level, and at a height of over ten 

 thousand feet made a complete circuit of the peaks. 



The scientific results of this remarkable expedition will 

 soon be published, and with them I hope will appear, in some 

 more popular form, Mr. Ross's beautiful series of telephotic 

 photographs. 



Mr. Ross tells me that a path through heavy woods and 

 giant bamboo (the bamboo was often over sixty feet in 

 height) was found. He passed these supposedly insuperable 

 obstacles in two days' march, and that after this the upper 

 mountain lands presented no difficulty whatever. 



A trip to the snowy basin of Kenia will now be within the 

 powers of any reasonably equipped sefari. Ten days from 

 Naivasha should see camp pitched on the edge of its principal 

 glacier. So much for the unexpected in East Africa ! 



Herds of elephant and buffalo were common amid these 

 untrodden mountain solitudes. The explorers' time, how- 

 ever, was so taken up with scientific work that no hunting 

 was done. 



All round Kenia on the dry slopes of the Guasi Nyiro 

 and farther to the northeast in the little known district 

 of Meru, once dangerous but now pacified, is the chosen 

 home of the rhino. It was in marching through the cactus 

 lands of the Guasi Nyiro that Chanler's expedition, in the 

 early nineties, was so tormented by their constant attentions. 

 Lieutenant Von Hohnel was terribly wounded by one of 

 these beasts, and had to be carried to the coast. The 



