WE FOLLOW THE GUASO NYIRO 



421 



On July 24 I started with just enough men to carry the 

 instruments and the photographic apparatus, and followed the 

 bed of the river, which widened here and there, but was, as a 

 rule, squeezed in between such perpendicular walls of rock that 

 we had to troop along in single file close to the edge of the 

 foaming water. At a bend of the stream, round a jutting- out 

 prominence, we climbed up the bank in the hope of discover- 

 ing a short cut, only to find our labour in vain as the bend was 

 quite unimportant. We made the pleasant discovery, how- 

 ever, that there remained now only one gneiss hill, some 760 

 feet high, of the range of heights which had given us so much 

 trouble, and from the top of it we should certainly be able to 

 get an extended view. So we went back to the river just to 

 quench our thirst, and then started on our climb. At the foot 

 of the hill we startled a quantity of game, beginning with a 

 solitary buffalo bull taking his noonday siesta, but who escaped, 

 as I did not notice him in time. I wounded several antelopes 

 with dark brown hair, probably kobus antelopes in their winter 

 clothing, but was prevented from following them by a rhino- 

 ceros dashing right across my path. I brought the latter down, 

 made my men cover the body with bushes to keep off the 

 vultures, and pressed on. 



The climb in the great heat was very exhausting, but I 

 was fully rewarded when I got to the top, for I was able to 

 look down upon a vast stretch of country, which I had hitherto 

 only seen piecemeal, and the general character of which I had 

 therefore not been able to ascertain. Eound about us stretched 

 the highlands in which we had wandered the day before. Far 

 away in the south rose up Mount Kenia, and in close proximity 

 to it the low Doenyo lol Deika hill region. On the east and 

 north-east the horizon was bounded at a dist ance of from twenty- 

 five to thirty miles by a closely-packed row of mountains and 

 hills varying in height from about 3,300 to 3,700 feet. Not 



