178 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



prettily-situated hill station built at the eastern 

 foot of Mount Kenia. Buffalo roam around 

 Embu in astonishing numbers, and I secured a 

 good bull with over 40-inch horns there. 



About ninety miles to the north of Nairobi, 

 Kenia— one of the three highest mountains of 

 Africa — raises her snow-clad crest three miles 

 above the level of the sea, peering through the 

 cloud-mists across a fair-robed plain to where 

 her sister peak of Kilimanjaro watches over the 

 best of Germany's possessions in Africa. 



In the heart of the fertile Kikuyu country, 

 around Mount Kenia, cluster a host of tribes — 

 peoples pastoral and agricultural, like the Masai 

 and the Kikuyu; peoples wild and unbroken 

 like the treacherous Suka; peoples warlike; 

 peoples nomadic. Yet, though these have 

 come through the ages to know the mountain as 

 the warden of their uncultured lives, they taunt 

 her with harbouring ghouls and fiends, forest 

 lions, and deadly snow-sprites. She is to them 

 at once a mysterious host of evil, and a maternal 

 god pouring from her sides tumbling streams, 

 and throwing to her children deep handfuls of 

 rich black earth. 



Kenia from its height of over 17,000 feet looks 

 down upon as many Government stations as she 

 does upon tribes of the governed. Nestling 

 around her colossal base, hidden by her foothills, 

 are Fort Hall, Embu, Meru, and Nyeri. Fort 

 Hall, named after an early official of our East 

 African Empire who laid down his life in the 

 cause of his Queen, lies on the southern side, 

 and is the capital of the Kenia Province. The 

 rushing Sagana scurries below it, and away to 

 the east, amid hillocks and verdure, the Tana 

 wanders seawards. The road to Embu, which 



