II 
ON THE JAMBENI RANGE 
3i 
thus spread out in panorama before me, seemed, from this 
bird’s-eye view, to be more or less open and fairly level, though 
hills and ranges were also to be seen. Its yellow colour, denot¬ 
ing dryness, contrasted strongly with the verdant hills we were 
on ; but this almost untrodden wilderness, stretching away 
to the far northern horizon where the tips of hazy peaks, just 
visible, seemed to beckon one on, had a wonderful fascination 
for me. I longed to pry into its mysteries. What especially 
attracted me was the knowledge that, save for a few scattered 
Ndorobos, it was uninhabited—an immense sanctuary still held 
possession of, as in primeval ages, by the (to me) more inter¬ 
esting denizens of the animal world. 
Embe is a beautiful and fertile country, though very broken. 
Many kraals are dotted about and there is a good deal of 
cultivation, particularly banana groves. On the steeper slopes 
there are woods with some fine trees in which plantain eaters 
call, while grotesque great hornbills sail across from cover to 
cover, alternately flapping and gliding with peculiar switchback 
flight, uttering their loud peevish plaint, the curiously character¬ 
istic cries of both harmonising exquisitely with the spirit of 
their surroundings like appropriate music—so sympathetic a 
composer is nature. But most of the hillsides are covered 
with a sort of jungle of what I should describe as giant weeds, 
where probably the timber has been cleared, the open valleys 
between being carpeted with the most lovely short, thick, 
springy turf, full of clover, than which nothing could be more 
delightfully green and soft and sweet looking. It is real sward 
from which you may cut a genuine tough sod—none of your 
tufts of grass with bare spaces between,—in fact more like an 
ideal English pasture than African veldt. Here the natives 
graze their few cattle (little humped beasts) and donkeys, and 
their more numerous goats and sheep : all very small but sleek 
and fat. The area of grass and jungle respectively depends 
upon the amount of stock : when cattle are numerous the pas¬ 
ture extends and the jungle is gradually conquered, but when 
