A RIDE THROUGH RHINO COUNTRY 315 



to north of Mt. Kenia possesses. I name it last, though 

 to my mind that is not by any means its place. The country 

 is watered abundantly, for Africa, by streams, hill or moun- 

 tain born, and though specially in Massai land with its 

 great cattle herds, these soon lose their clear flow and 

 become more or less turbid and yellow, still their waters 

 are sweet and cool and are safe to drink without boiling. 

 The one stream I now write about is unlike any I have 

 found in Africa. It leaves the mountain by way of one 

 of the many gorges that like great ribs seam its sides. 

 There, somewhere among tangled forest as yet impene- 

 trable, it has its spring sources. It has somehow chosen 

 for itself a different course from that of all other brooks, 

 which flow downward to form the Guasi Nyiro river, 

 for these a few miles from the mountain are yellow, while 

 this stream runs clear and cool as a trout brook in new 

 or old England. Its flow is so rapid that it cuts for itself 

 a gorge among the hills, and by the time it reaches the 

 more level country that rises toward the base of the moun- 

 tain, it has worn a veritable canon deep in the grassy 

 slopes. 



I am sitting as I write, on a red granite kopje some 

 half-mile from the edge. I can see the whole course of 

 this mountain stream till it joins the large volume of the 

 Guasi Nyiro five miles to the westward. In this very 

 early morning light, while the vapours of night still hang 

 tangled in the forest tops, faint silvery smoky columns of 

 the lightest spray rise above the dark tree-tops which line 

 the little canon, marking each of them, the place where 

 it rushes downward in a rapid or tumbles to a fall. 



Clear streams are almost unknown here, so this one 

 will repay a long ride. Indeed there is no better camping 

 place in all the country. Its head waters are more fre- 

 quented by buffalo than any other region, except it be the 

 far lower and less healthy banks of the Tana River. And 



