TO THE UASIN GISHU 
329 
high that the nights were actually cold^ although we crossed 
and recrossed the equator. The landscape in its general 
effect called to mind southern Oregon and northern Cali¬ 
fornia rather than any tropical country. Some of the hills 
were bald, others wooded to the top; there were wet 
meadows, and hill-sides covered with tussocks of rank, thick¬ 
growing grass, alternating with stretches of forest; and the 
chief trees of the forest were stately cedars, yews, and tall 
laurel-leaved olives. All this was, at least in superficial 
aspect, northern enough; but now and then we came to 
patches of the thoroughly tropical bamboo, which in East 
Africa, however, one soon grows to associate with cold, 
rainy weather, for it only grows at high altitudes. In this 
country, high, cold, rainy, there were several kinds of buck, 
but none in any numbers. The most interesting were the 
roan antelope, which went in herds. Their trails led every¬ 
where, across the high, rolling hill pastures of coarse grass, 
and through the tangled tree groves and the still, lifeless 
bamboo jungle. They were found in herds and lived in the 
open, feeding on the bare hill-sides and in the wet valleys 
at all hours; but they took cover freely, and when the 
merciless gales blew they sought shelter in woodland and 
jungle. Usually they grazed, but once I saw one browsing. 
Both on our way in and on our way back, through this hill 
country, we shot several roan, for, though their horns are 
poor, they form a distinct sub-species, peculiar to the re¬ 
gion. The roan is a big antelope, nearly as tall, although 
by no means as bulky, as an eland, with curved scimitar¬ 
like horns, huge ears, and face markings as sharply defined 
as those of an oryx. It is found here and there, in isolated 
localities, throughout Africa south of the Sahara, and is of 
