IN AFRICA 
3U 
boy, and we got another boy from the hotel to go 
along for general utility purposes. Into this ve¬ 
hicle we placed our guns, and at seven o’clock in 
the morning drove out of the town. In fifteen or 
twenty minutes we had passed through the streets 
and had reached the pleasant roads of the open 
plains. Soon we passed the race-track and then 
howled merrily along between peaceful barbed-wire 
fences. Occasional groups of Kikuyus were tramp¬ 
ing along the road, bringing in eggs or milk to 
Nairobi. A farm-house or two lay off to either side, 
and once or twice we passed boys herding little 
bunches of ostriches. 
At about a quarter to eight we drove up the tree- 
lined avenue of a farm-house and a pleasant-faced 
woman responded to our knock. We asked for per¬ 
mission to shoot on the farm and were told that we 
were quite welcome to shoot as much as we wished. 
Five minutes later, less than an hour’s drive from 
Nairobi, we drove past a herd of nearly sixty im- 
palla. They watched us gravely from a distance of 
two hundred yards. At this point we left the well- 
traveled road and drove into the short prairie grass 
that carpeted the Athi Plains. The carriage 
bumped pleasantly along, and as we reached a little 
rise a few hundred feet away, the great stretch of 
the plains lay spread out before us. 
Mount Kenia, eighty or ninety miles north, was 
clear and bright with its snow-capped peaks spark¬ 
ling in the early sunlight. Off to its left rose the 
Aberdare Range, with the dominating peak of 
