A DRAMATIC EPISODE 
295 
you were filled with such distrust and suspicion that 
you would hardly believe him if he said he thought 
it was going to rain, or that crops were looking up. 
With this man as a guide, and with four more 
who were tempted by the bright red blankets we 
gave, our caravan started on one of the strangest 
and perhaps most foolhardy trips that presumably 
sane people ever made. In the first place, probably 
fewer than half a dozen white men had ever as¬ 
cended Mount Elgon. There were no adequate 
maps of the region, and the one we had was woe¬ 
fully inaccurate. It was made as if from tele¬ 
graphic description, and the only thing in which it 
proved trustworthy was that there was a mountain 
there and that it was about fourteen thousand two 
hundred feet high, and that the line separating 
British East Africa from Uganda ran through the 
crater at the top. 
Our delay at the Ketosh village had greatly re¬ 
duced our food supplies for the porters, and there 
was only enough left to last six days. In that time 
we should have to ascend the mountain and descend 
to some place where food supplies could be pro¬ 
cured. It all looked quite quixotic. We bought 
two bullocks, a sheep, and a goat, and, with our 
guides ahead, our entire safari of over a hundred 
souls turned toward the grim heights that shot up 
before us. 
The trail for the first thousand feet of ascent was 
steep and hard to climb. The rocks high above us 
were specked with natives, who gazed down in won- 
