ON MOUNT NYIRO 



73 



of human habitation, and the whole neighbourhood appeared 

 to be but shghtly fertile. With a view to raising our spirits 

 we recalled all that had been told us at Nyemps about the im- 

 portance to us of this mountain, and how absolutely necessary 

 it was for us to reach it before we could hope to penetrate 

 further north. After all, as we discovered later, the mountain 

 was inhabited ; and though we could not hope to replace our 

 vanished stores, we had at least left the uninhabited wilderness 

 behind us, and could get speech with men who would be able 

 to orive us some useful information. We had broken through 

 the barrier dividino- the inhabited from the uninhabited dis- 

 tricts, and in so doing had achieved one of the most difficult 

 of the aims we had in view. 



'The next day M'as spent by the men in resting, and by us 

 in hunting and examining the neighbourhood more closely. 

 We were only able to explore the southern face, which runs 

 from east to west for a distance of about six and a half miles, 

 and consists of a series of steep slopes from 1,000 to 2,300 feet 

 high, everywhere well clothed with tree euphorbias, and form- 

 ing two short precipitous valleys with southern outlets, in the 

 eastern of which lay our camp, at a height of some 4,229 feet 

 above the sea-level. A numl^er of isolated and by no means 

 insignificant heights, south of Mount Nyiro, formed connecting 

 links between it and the Saddim chain, so that the former 

 really is the northern end of the General Matthews chain. And 

 near to Mount Nyiro on the north-east rises a very precipitous 

 and rugged mountain called Loldibo, beyond which the land 

 slopes rapidly down and becomes apparently perfectly flat. This 

 flat stretch of country we were told was that Samburu to which 

 we had eagerly looked forward for so long; but no one knew 

 anything about a lake of the same name. 



On the first afternoon of our stay on Mount Nyiro, only 

 two native men came to our camp. Sokoni, Barnoti, and Jumbe 



