ENDERIT RIVER AND LAKE NAKURU 29 



seldom occur, for the game here, such as zebra, ehmd, 

 harteheest, impahi, waterbuck, gazelles, wart-hog and 

 grass-antelopes of sorts, are nearly always m herds, and 

 those herds, while among bush, are moving about on 

 the feed. Hence the problem is not simple. Firstly, 

 the stalker must get forward at a fair speed or he will 

 lose touch. Then in a herd, say, of a dozen, there will 

 probably be only one really good head. The other 

 eleven are only so many nuisances and sources of 

 danger. All the eleven must, nevertheless, be held 

 under accurate observation, or else some insignificant 

 little beastie, appearing at an unexpected spot, will ruin 

 the whole operation. Bush-stalking, in short, is an art 

 in itself, affording difficult, but withal very pretty, 

 manoeuvrino\ The hunter who has sin2;led out the 

 master-buck, held him in all his vagaries, avoided the 

 keen view of the other eleven, and finally secured the 

 prize, has done good work. 



More often, instead of eleven, there will be forty, 

 fifty or sixty undesired individuals whose gaze it is 

 necessary to shun. 



Two difficulties deserve mention. First, the ever- 

 shifting wind, which changes, both in force and direction, 

 with the changing hours of the day. This trouble is 

 common to all tropical Africa, but is specially pronounced 

 in this great Rift Valley, which, though its fioor averages 

 6,000 ft. elevation, is yet shut in by loftier mountain- 

 ranges of 10,000 to 14,000 ft. in altitude, and distant 

 some thirty to fifty miles apart. Hence the light airs 

 move in puffs and eddies, wafting scent one knows not 

 whither. When, after infinite care, one has gained the 

 deadly range, and is scrutinising each horn in the 

 herd to make sure of killing the best, suddenly, with- 

 out a moment's warning, up goes every head. Some 

 treacherous back-set breeze has betrayed us, and in an 

 instant the game is gone, swift and silent as a thought. 



The second danger lies in the presence of so many 

 creatures that lie hidden. I pass over the francolins and 

 guinea-fowl, since they are no worse than the cockling 



