252 
ON SAFARI 
Makindu 
This is a country of close scrub and bush, almost 
viewless, and at this season (March) bare of game 
beyond a few kongoni, some waterbuck and small 
antelopes. There was old spoor of giraffe, and also of 
eland, more recent; but we saw neither, nor any sign of 
Oryx callotis, of which we were specially in search. 
This dense bush swarmed with guinea-fowl and big 
brown francolins (F. schuetti ), as well as the great bare- 
throated spur-fowl (Pternistes infuscatus), red as 
cock-pheasants, that clattered as they rose. There 
appeared to be two distinct species of this latter ; and 
we also observed hornbills, coucal or bush-cuckoo, green 
pigeons, helmet-shrikes with floppy flight, and most of 
the other birds already recorded at Simba. 
A few miles out, completely surrounded by bush, 
we came on the Government farm, where cotton, fibre 
and other produce were growing luxuriantly, and where 
there was abundant water with a complete system of 
irrigation. Yet it was abandoned—presumably for some 
sufficient reason, though none was apparent. Makindu, 
when it formed “ rail-head,” had some little importance, 
but has now fallen from its (never very) high estate. 
Since writing the above, I read in Blue-book, March 
1907, that Makindu Farm was finally abandoned on 
March 31, 1906—a few days after we were there— 
owing to the extreme unhealthiness of the site, the 
managers and staff being constantly down with fever, 
and the whole stock of cattle killed by the tsetse-fly. 
“The natives of the neighbouring hills,” adds the Blue- 
book, with fine official humour, “ have confined their 
interest in the farm to raiding most of the live stock.” 
Sultan Hamud 
A game-like country, prettily situated in a wide gap 
between enclosing mountains. Herds of giraffe charac- 
