424 THE LAND OF THE LION 



not stumble on them, or if you have no native scouts who 

 know the habitat of the game, you may not be aware of the 

 opportunities you have thrown away till you are a hun- 

 dred miles distant. 



One more determined effort I would make to get my 

 buffalo, and I so laid my plans that if these green hilly 

 ridges would not give me one, I would go farther down 

 stream and try the swampy and less healthy country towards 

 Embo. 



As we made our way slowly over the crests of the hills 

 and descended rapidly towards the Tana Valley, the heat 

 was oppressive; the hills shut us in, and shut off the cool 

 Kenia breezes that are so refreshing in the evening as you 

 sit at your tent door and face the lovely mountain; and 

 the men were fagged and thirsty when we pitched camp, 

 beneath a precipitous slope that rose 2,500 feet above our 

 heads. 



My friends at Punda Melia had provided me with a 

 local hunter, a Kikuyu, whose soubriquet was "Plumes/' 

 a good man on lions, and a fair tracker. He knew the 

 country well, and was confident we should at least find 

 fresh sign of buffalo before making camp. But it was 

 not to be. Buffalo there had been, but it was several weeks 

 since they had visited the ravines we were crossing. 



The country is so broken up hereabouts, there are so 

 many gorges and dongas and corners in it and buffalo go 

 to bed so early in the morning, feeding only at night, hid- 

 ing themselves almost as soon as the sun is up, that unless 

 you have the good fortune to come on a large herd you may 

 hunt for days, and not get a shot. 



Here, too, the ground is extraordinarily hard. The 

 ponderous rhino] scarcely leaves a sign, and were it not 

 that the heavy night dews lie on the grass where cliffs 

 and trees shade it for more than two hours after sunrise, 

 success would be largely a matter of mere luck. 



