FIRST EXPEDITION TO EAST AFRICA 89 



near enough to shoot. I personally saw no 

 lions. We had a good dry camp, and the rain- 

 water, collected from the corrugated iron roof 

 of the hut occupied by the workmen employed 

 on the railway, was the best water I had tasted 

 in the course of the expedition. Some of the 

 water we drank from lake Nainasha was very 

 bad, the papyrus roots imparting to it a most 

 nauseating flavour; but when filtered it did not 

 appear to be unwholesome. With the exception 

 of the reed-buck, however, there was not much 

 game in the vicinity, and as soon as we had 

 hunted all the ground we moved camp again. 



I had about ten days more at my disposal, 

 and a lion was the animal which I particularly 

 wished to shoot, so I went from Gilgil, with a 

 few Kikuyu porters, to the Simba railway 

 station, which is a noted place for lions. Judd 

 followed me in a day or two. I arrived at Simba 

 late in the evening, and slept in the waiting- 

 room in the station, and the porters slept in the 

 verandah. The station-master said that no 

 lions had been heard of near the station for six 

 months, but during that night a lioness and 

 cub walked past the station on the railway-line 

 within a few feet of the sleeping porters. 



If the weather had permitted of our sitting 

 up in a machan I think we should have bagged 

 that lioness, but the rains were by this time so 

 heavy that a night out of doors might have 

 involved appalling discomfort. The nights also 

 were cloudy and very dark. I shot a hartebeest, 

 and we made the porters drag the carcase across 

 country to a disused plate-layer's house on the 



