294 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
tents close to half a dozen flat-topped thorn-trees. We 
spent several days at this camp. Many kites came around 
the tents, but neither vultures nor ravens. The country 
was a vast plain bounded on almost every hand by chains 
of far-off mountains. In the south-west, just beyond the 
equator, the snows of Kenia lifted toward the sky. To the 
north the barren ranges were grim with the grimness of the 
desert. The flats were covered with pale, bleached grass 
which waved all day long in the wind; for though there 
were sometimes calms, or changes in the wind, on most of 
the days we were out it never ceased blowing from some 
point in the south. In places the parched soil was crumbling 
and rotten; in other places it was thickly strewn with vol¬ 
canic stones; there were but few tracts over which a horse 
could gallop at speed, although neither the rocks nor the 
rotten soil seemed to hamper the movements of the game. 
Here and there were treeless stretches. Elsewhere there 
were occasional palms; and trees thirty or forty feet high, 
seemingly cactus or aloes, which looked even more like 
candelabra than the euphorbia which is thus named; and 
a scattered growth of thorn-trees and bushes. The thorn- 
trees were of many kinds. One bore only a few leathery 
leaves, the place of foliage being taken by the mass of poi¬ 
sonous-looking, fleshy spines which, together with the 
ends of the branches, were bright green. The camel-thorn 
was completely armed with little, sharply hooked thorns 
which tore whatever they touched, whether flesh or clothes. 
Then there were the mimosas, with long, straight thorn 
spikes; they aue so plentiful in certain places along the 
Guaso Nyero that almost all the lions have festering sores 
in their paws because of the spikes that have broken off in 
