FIRST EXPEDITION FROM MOMBASA 



ostriches, lions and rarely warthogs. Leopards may sometimes 

 be heard at night, and hyenas are, of course, numerous, though 

 these I regard as vermin. Guinea-fowl, francoHns, etc., are 

 plentiful in places. There are also plenty of hippos in the Tana 

 and the lower reaches of its larger tributaries. Impala (or pallah, 

 as it is sometimes written) are curiously scarce, even in parts that 

 seem thoroughly favourable to them ; it seems strange why, 

 seeing that the species is present, they should be so few here. In 

 South-Eastern Africa they used to fairly teem in their favourite 

 resorts — a thousand in a troop being sometimes no exaggeration, 

 probably often an underestimate — whereas nowhere in Equa- 

 torial Africa have I seen anything approaching to such numbers. 

 Coke's hartebeeste is here on the very hmit of its range. I 

 saw a few near Laiju and between there and the Tana, but none 

 farther east, though there are more (as I afterwards found) in 

 the opposite direction (that is westwards, between the Jambeni 

 hills and the river) — northward it is entirely absent. 



It will thus be seen that the main stream of the Mackenzie 

 River (though in itself little more than a good-sized brook in its 

 upper course) may be taken as the line of demarcation limiting 

 the ranges of both Coke's hartebeeste and Grevy's zebra, though 

 in opposite directions, at this point, which is continued on the 

 one hand by the Jambeni range to Kenia and on the other by 

 the Tana eastwards. The giraffe here is the northern species : 

 of its peculiarities and range I shall have more to say later on. 

 Buffaloes are almost extinct since the great cattle plague^ of 

 some years before, especially in this region ; the occasional 

 spoor of an odd one or two is all that is ever seen of them 

 now. Elands (which also suffered) may still be met with, 

 though a little farther on. 



On the arrival of the porters I had sent back for, the store 

 of biltong — by this time fairly dry — was lashed up into long 



' This iiuirrain swept through East Cential Africa in the year 1891. It did not — as 

 under the name of rinderpest it is said to have done or to be doing now — destroy other 

 game than the kinds specified, at all events to any appreciable extent. 



