THE LAST SEFARI 423 



white man to see Kenia, December 3, 1849. The great 

 explorer, Joseph Thompson, whose statue Sir Harry John- 

 son well says should stand at the gateway of the land he 

 toiled and suffered so much to explore, saw Kenia next. 

 He came across the Aberdare and saw it from the west, 

 and had the same view that I had of the upper battlements 

 of the mountain, gleaming forth above the dense cloud bank 

 that blots out all sign of the massive sweeping base. 



In the evening, just before sunset, Kenia is often so seen. 

 In the hot weather the heavy forest land round the moun- 

 tain base breeds a perpetual fog bank. The colour of the 

 cloudy mass mingles with and merges in the plain. None 

 would fancy that behind it a great Alp lay hidden. The 

 upper cloud strata thin out and part about five-thirty o'clock, 

 especially if the evening is still; suddenly you lift your eyes 

 from the ground, as you trudge homeward, and the glorious 

 vision is vouchsafed to you. Ice, snow, rock, all glorified 

 by the setting sun; marvelous, spirit-like, divine, cut off, 

 as it were, by immeasurable distance, from all contact with 

 the gross earth. Thompson says: "Kenia was to me what 

 the sacred stone of Mecca is to the faithful who have wan- 

 dered from distant lands, surmounted perils and hardships 

 that they might kiss or see the beloved object, and then if 

 it were God's will, die." 



I had not yet bagged a buffalo. I had, as I have tried 

 to tell elsewhere, worked hard and often for one, but in 

 vain. I had camped on the borderland of a forest country 

 where they were most abundant; but the bad management 

 of my friend's professional hunter, who asserted that he 

 knew the country thoroughly, when he did not know it at 

 all, had resulted in our sefari being tied fast for ten days, 

 while all the men had to make a journey of more than 

 seventy miles to get food. Such contretemps will happen. 

 You will pass close to a place where the very beasts you 

 are most anxious to secure are easily found, and if you do 



