328 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
touch of that craving for ease and luxury the indulgence in 
which turns any sport into a sham and a laughing-stock. 
Big-game hunting, pursued as he has pursued it, stands 
at the opposite pole from those so-called sports carried on 
primarily either as money-making exhibitions, or, what is 
^ quite as bad—though the two evils are usually found in 
different social strata—in a spirit of such luxurious self- 
indulgence as to render them at best harmless extravagances, 
and at worst forces which positively tend to the weakening 
of moral and physical fibre. 
On October 26, Tarlton, Kermit, Heller, and I started 
from the railroad station of Londiani, for the Uasin Gishu 
plateau and the ’Nzoi River, which flows not far from the 
foot of Mount Elgon. This stretch of country has appar¬ 
ently received its fauna from the shores of Lake Victoria 
Nyanza, and contains several kinds of antelope, and a 
race or variety of giraffe, the five-horned, which are not 
found to the eastward, in the region where we had already 
hunted. 
On the 27th we were marching hard, and I had no 
chance to hunt; I would have liked to take a hunt, because 
it was my birthday. The year before I had celebrated my 
fiftieth birthday by riding my jumping horse, Roswell, over 
all the jumps in Rock Creek Park, at Washington. Ros¬ 
well is a safe and good jumper, and a very easy horse to sit 
at a jump; he took me, without hesitation or error, over 
everything, from the water jump to the stone wall, the rails, 
and the bank, including a brush hurdle just over five feet 
and a half high. 
For the first four days our route led among rolling 
hills and along valleys and ravines, the country being so 
