A LION-DRIYE 



47 



placed I knew not, nor could they tell where we two 

 were. While the beat progressed I heard some large 

 animal approaching, heard it arrive in the thicket 

 immediately on my front, and stop there. In vain I 

 looked around for a convenient tree to ascend, not so 

 much from fear of a lion as from the risk of promiscuous 

 bullets. Trees there were in plenty, but not one could 

 be climbed by reason of the pendent masses of parasitic 

 plants and prehensile thorny creepers w^ith which each 

 trunk was clad. As the beaters came in the beast broke. 

 It was only a bushbuck ; no one fired. But with careless 

 guns there would have been more danger from stray 

 bullets than from the most savage beast that roams the 

 African forest. The evening ended in backsheesh. The 

 "boys "asked for twopence each. I served out thrice 

 that sum, and posed as a benefactor. Next morning we 

 started on the long march to Lake Baringo. 



A curious incident deserves record. At the station at 

 Nakuru was posted a written notice that (presumably by 

 reason of some small trouble with the natives) sportsmen 

 were forbidden to proceed " north of the equator," wdiich, 

 the notice added, " might be taken as passing over Molo 

 bridge." Now to me the equator had always been a sort 

 of abstraction — not a concrete thing capable of passing 

 over a bridge, like a donkey or a telegraph-wire. Hence 

 I had mistaken the notice for some tropical joke ! 

 Fortunately for us, being that night in the august 

 company of the Government, the error was discovered 

 in time and the necessary permit issued. 



