THE GUASO NYERO 
295 
them. In these thorn-trees the weaver birds had built 
multitudes of their straw nests, each with its bottle-shaped 
mouth toward the north, away from the direction of the 
prevailing wind. 
Each morning we were up at dawn, and saw the heavens 
redden and the sun flame over the rim of the world. All 
day long we rode and walked across the endless flats, save 
that at noon, when the sky was like molten brass, we might 
rest under the thin half shade of some thorn-tree. As the 
shadows lengthened and the harsh, pitiless glare softened, 
we might turn campward; or we might hunt until the sun 
went down, and the mountains in the far-off west, and the 
sky above them, grew faint and dim with the hues of fairy¬ 
land. Then we would ride back through the soft, warm 
beauty of the tropic night, the stars blazing overhead and 
the silver moonlight flooding the reaches of dry grass; it 
was so bright that our shadows were almost as black and 
clear-cut as in the day. On reaching camp I would take 
a cup of tea with crackers or gingersnaps, and after a hot 
bath and a shave I was always eager for dinner. 
Scattered over these flats were herds of zebra, oryx, and 
gazelle. The gazelle, the most plentiful and much the 
tamest of the game, were the northern form of the Grant’s 
gazelle, with straighter horns which represented the oppo¬ 
site extreme when compared with the horns of the Roberts’ 
type which we got on the Sotik. They seemed to me some¬ 
what less in size than the big gazelle of the Kapiti Plains. 
One of the bucks I shot, an adult of average size (I was 
not able to weigh my biggest one), weighed one hundred and 
fifteen pounds; a very big true Grant’s buck which I shot 
on the Kapiti Plains weighed one hundred and seventy-one 
