CHAPTER IX 
TO LAKE NAIVASHA 
From this camp we turned north toward Lake Nai- 
vasha. 
The Sotik country through which we had hunted was 
sorely stricken by drought. The grass was short and with¬ 
ered and most of the waterholes were drying up, while 
both the game and the flocks and herds of the nomad Masai 
gathered round the watercourses in which there were still 
occasional muddy pools, and grazed their neighborhood 
bare of pasturage. It was an unceasing pleasure to watch 
the ways of the game and to study their varying habits. 
Where there was a river from which to drink, or where there 
were many pools, the different kinds of buck, and the zebra, 
often showed comparatively little timidity about drinking, 
and came boldly down to the water’s edge, sometimes in 
broad daylight, sometimes in darkness; although even 
under those conditions they were very cautious if there was 
cover at the drinking place. But where the pools were few 
they never approached one without feeling panic dread of 
their great enemy the lion, who, they knew well, might be 
lurking around their drinking place. At such a pool I once 
saw a herd of zebras come to water at nightfall. They stood 
motionless some distance off; then they slowly approached, 
and twice on false alarms wheeled and fled at speed; at last 
the leaders ventured to the brink of the pool and at once the 
198 
