166 
IN AFRICA 
were on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, near where it 
merges into the lower slopes of Mount Elgon. The 
first and the fourth experiences were terrifying 
ones, never to be forgotten. An Englishman, if he 
were to describe them, would say “they were rather 
nasty, you know,” which indicates how really seri¬ 
ous they were. The second and the third experi¬ 
ences were interesting, but not particularly dan¬ 
gerous. 
Mount Kenia is a great motherly mountain that 
spreads over an immense area and raises its snow¬ 
capped peaks over eighteen thousand feet above 
the equator. The lower slopes are as beautiful as a 
park and are covered with the fields and the herds of 
the prosperous Kikuyus and other tribes. Scores 
of native villages of varying sizes are picturesquely 
planted among the banana groves and wooded val¬ 
leys on this lower slope, each with its local chief, or 
sultan, and each tribe with its head sultan. 
In a day’s “trek” one meets many sultans with 
their more or less naked retinues, and every one of 
them spits on his hand, presses it to his forehead, and 
shakes hands with you. It is the form of greeting 
among the Kikuyus, and, in my opinion, might be 
improved. These people lead a happy pastoral life 
amid surroundings of exceptional beauty. Above 
the cultivated shambas, or fields of sweet potatoes 
and tobacco and sugar and groves of bananas, comes 
a strip of low bush country. It is a mile or two 
wide, scarcely ten feet high, and so dense that noth¬ 
ing but an elephant could force its way through the 
