420 THE LAND OF THE LION 



my little expedition, but let my outfitters give me any men 

 they chose. I had, of course, my own tentboy and gun- 

 bearer. I mention this, not because it is of any impor- 

 tance, but because it illustrates how necessary in every 

 case it is to look after the choice of your men, if you expect 

 to do any good work with them. We were only going to 

 Punda Melia, forty-five miles away, by the best road 

 in the Protectorate. I had light loads and seventeen men. 

 Well, the sefari made just ten miles and then stuck fast. 

 I camped by the roadside, tried to possess my soul in 

 patience, and wrote up my notes for two days, till I could 

 send back, get better men and proceed on my way. 



The country on the Fort Hall road I found greatly 

 changed. When I had passed that way before, the road 

 was only a track, there were no bridges, and we had to 

 ford with difficulty several of the streams. The considerable 

 stream of the Theka then detained us. Now I found an 

 almost continuous line of farms, and solidly built bridges 

 everywhere. 



The game herds had vanished, and I made no attempt 

 to get meat for my men till I reached Punda Melia. 



At P. I found two old friends, who had already put 

 more than four years of desperately hard work behind them, 

 and in consequence were beginning to see their way to a 

 modest measure of success. Here I was on the outer 

 edge of the native shamba country once more. 



From Punda Melia the land slopes rapidly down to the 

 Tana valley on the northeast. On this side rough, 

 hilly country, broken into innumerable valleys, forms a 

 sort of steep promontory, that thrusts in between the two 

 rivers - - Theka and Tana. 



To the north, a very broken district, dry and rocky, 

 stretches far away towards Kenia. 



To the northwest lies the best tilled, and best watered 

 land in the Protectorate, the very richest of the Kikuyu 



