222 THROUGH MASAILAND TO THE BORDERS OF KIKU^U 



and boastful conceit of the natives of Zanzibar are most fully 

 displayed. 



After the men had had a day's rest we started again, taking 

 with us no less than a ton and a half of food alone, consisting 

 chiefly of dried bananas, beans, and banana and eleusine meal. 

 The first day we marched past Count Teleki's camping-place 

 to the Ngare Eongai, a little stream of clear water with scarcely 

 any channel, flowing over the grassy steppes in an easterly 

 direction for some thousand paces further, to disappear in the 

 ground. Soon after we reached camp, ten or twelve Masai 

 moruu came to demand the usual tribute, for though we 

 formed but half a caravan, we were not to escape having to 

 put our hands in our pockets. We asked where the moran, 

 or warriors, were, and were told they were away on a raid. 

 The same reply was given to Thomson to a similar inquiry, 

 and, as a matter of fact, there are so few warriors in the 

 dreaded Leitokit6k district that they have to combine with 

 their kinsmen on Lake Nyiri ; but the tales told of the Masai 

 are still quite enough to make a great impression on caravans 

 passing through this neighbourhood. 



Our camp was perfectly without shelter at a height of about 

 5,250 feet, and as there was a cloudy sky with a continuous 

 fresh south-west wind blowing we had no reason to complain 

 of the heat. 



Our next day's march brought us to Malago Kanga. During 

 the first hour the path led upwards across the dried-up beds 

 of two streams to the flat top of a broad ridge which has a 

 westerly slope and is gradually merged in the Kilimanjaro 

 group. The sides of this mountain are dotted with luxuriant 

 vegetation, lofty trees with gleaming white stumps, form- 

 ing a belt at a height of from 6,550 to 6,880 feet, looking 

 in the distance like perpendicular walls of rock surmounted 

 by foliage. The second portion of the march was down 



