CHAPTER II 
ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 
The house at which we were staying stood on the beau¬ 
tiful Kitanga hills. They were so named after an English¬ 
man, to whom the natives had given the name of Kitanga; 
some years ago, as we were told, he had been killed by a 
lion near where the ranch house now stood; and we were 
shown his grave in the little Machakos graveyard. The 
house was one story high, clean and comfortable, with a 
veranda running round three sides; and on the veranda 
were lion skins and the skull of a rhinoceros. From the 
house we looked over hills and wide lonely plains; the 
green valley below, with its flat-topped acacias, was very 
lovely; and in the evening we could see, scores of miles 
away, the snowy summit of mighty Kilimanjaro turn 
crimson in the setting sun. The twilights were not long; 
and when night fell, stars new to northern eyes flashed 
glorious in the sky. Above the horizon hung the Southern 
Cross, and directly opposite in the heavens was our old 
familiar friend the Wain, the Great Bear, upside down and 
pointing to a North Star so low behind a hill that we could 
not see it. It is a dry country, and we saw it in the second 
year of a drought; yet I believe it to be a country of high 
promise for settlers of white race. In many ways it reminds 
one rather curiously of the great plains of the West, where 
they slope upward to the foot-hills of the Rockies. It is a 
30 
