TREKKING THROUGH THE THIRST 157 
and shape, for at dawn the bird songs made real music. 
The naturalists trapped many small mammals: big-eared 
mice looking like our white-footed mice, mice with spiny 
fur, mice that lived in trees, rats striped like our chip¬ 
munks, rats that jumped like jerboas, big cane-rats, dor¬ 
mice, and tiny shrews. Meercats, things akin to a small 
mongoose, lived out in the open plains, burrowing in com¬ 
panies like prairie dogs, very spry and active, and looking 
like picket pins when they stood up on end to survey us. 
I killed a nine-foot python which had swallowed a rab¬ 
bit. Game was not plentiful, but we killed enough for 
the table. I shot a wildebeest bull one day, having edged 
up to it on foot, after missing it standing; I broke it down 
with a bullet through the hips as it galloped across my front 
at three hundred yards. Kermit killed our first topi, a bull; 
a beautiful animal, the size of a hartebeest, its glossy coat 
with a satin sheen, varying from brown to silver and purple. 
By the Guaso Nyero we halted for several days; and 
we arranged to leave Mearns and Loring in a permanent 
camp, so that they might seriously study and collect the 
birds and small mammals while the rest of us pushed 
wherever we wished after the big game. The tents were 
pitched, and the ox wagons drawn up on the southern side 
of the muddy river, by the edge of a wide plain, on which 
we could see the game grazing as we walked around camp. 
The alluvial flats bordering the river, and some of the 
higher plains, were covered with an open forest growth, the 
most common tree looking exactly like a giant sage-brush, 
thirty feet high; and there were tall aloes and cactus and 
flat-topped mimosa. We found a wee hedgehog, with much 
white about it. He would cuddle up in my hand snuffling 
