II 



A GIRAFFE-HUNT IN THE LOLDEIGA HILLS 



THE Loldeiga Hills consist of a comparatively low-bush 

 and acacia - covered range, forming a detached north- 

 westerly spur of Mount Kenia, whose snow-covered peak rises 

 to the height of approximately tw^enty thousand feet in the 

 tropical heat of equatorial British East Africa. Tw^o and a half 

 days from Nyeri, the last British post, after a march over dry 

 and dusty plains teeming with zebra, oryx, Grant's and Thom- 

 son's gazelle and rhinoceros, Jackson's hartebeest, and ostrich 

 in lesser numbers, our party, which consisted of my friend 

 Fuguet, myself, and a caravan of about forty Swahili porters, 

 and eighteen heavily laden pack-donkeys, reached the base of 

 these hills in the late afternoon of one of the first days of 

 February. ■ 



Our camp consisted of a large tent for ourselves, a cook-tent, 

 half a dozen shelter - tents for the men, and an acacia-thorn 

 boma, or corral, for the pack-animals. We located it before dark 

 in a picturesque spot among the large, tropical trees which bor- 

 dered the banks of a wide, swift, and shallow branch of a river 

 known as the Guaso Nyiro. To the south stretched the parched 

 and dusty plains over which we had travelled ; to the east the 

 snow-capped peak of Mount Kenia arose upward into the blue, 

 tropical sky; on the north were the Loldeiga Hills, blackened by 

 recent bush fires; while to the westward, and across the stream, 

 extended a gently rolling country covered with grassy plains 

 and acacias, and terminating in a distant blue range of hills. 



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