7oi 
EXPERIENCES IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 
told the flowers at that time are wonderful ; there was but 
little ram the whole time I was in the country, we had a few 
tremendous thunderstorms when one thought every tree 
around one would be struck and one sat in one’s tent and 
trembled, and a few tropical down-pours of rain which soon 
cleared up and left everything much freshened up. otherwise 
the weather was ot the most perfect description ; the nights 
and early mornings were often extremely cold, but directly 
the sun got up it quickly became very hot though not often 
unpleasantly so. Tt is only of recent years that East Africa 
has been at all opened up or anything known of the interior, 
the railway is but five years old. the town of Nairobi very 
little older ; fifteen years ago I suppose there was hardly a 
white man in the country and even now much of it remains 
to be discovered; it is a country still in its infancy, its aspect, 
its animals, its forests are what they were thousands of years 
ago and the Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus seem like living 
relics of a pre-historic age ; although much Natural Historv 
work has of late years been done there is a great deal still to 
learn, and new species are constantly turning up; my great 
hopes to discover an entirely new bird were not realized though 
l shot many very rare and interesting species ; the majority 
of which at the time were quite unknown to me. 
I suppose no one ever forgets their first night under canvas, 
far from civilization, on one of darkest Africa’s greatest 
plains ; certainly I shall never forget mine : let me try and 
describe one of our typical camps, we always, of course, had 
to pitch our tents near water and. if possible, under the shade 
of some big tree, and every evening just before dark there was 
constant coming and going of porters with water, or firewood, 
some of the men would be busy cooking our dinner, otheis 
attending to the skins and heads, others seeing to the donkeys, 
while many would be lying idly about, often singing, con- 
stantly laughing, especially if “ master ” had shot a good 
‘•head” and there was plenty of meat in camp ; then the dinner 
while we eat a choice steak of Gazelle shot that morning 
and watch a glorious evening sunset, the talk over the 
day’s sport by the camp fire while gradually darkness comes 
