CHAPTER II 
ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 
The house at which we were staying stood on the 
beautiful Kitanga Hills. They were so named after an 
Englishman, to whom the natives had given the name 
of Kitanga. Some years ago, as we were told, he had 
been killed by a lion near where the ranch house now 
stood ; and we were shown his grave in the little 
Machakos graveyard. The house was one story high, 
clean and comfortable, with a veranda running round 
three sides; and on the veranda were lion-skins and the 
skull of a rhinoceros. From the house we looked over 
hills and wide, lonely plains ; the green valley below, 
with its flat-topped acacias, was very lovely; and in the 
evening we could see, scores of miles away, the snowy 
summit of mighty Kilimanjaro turn crimson in the 
setting sun. The twilights were not long ; and when 
night fell, stars new to Northern eyes flashed glorious in 
the sky. Above the horizon hung the Southern Cross, 
and directly opposite in the heavens was our old familiar 
friend the Wain, the Great Bear, upside down and 
pointing to a North Star so low behind a hill that we 
could not see it. It is a dry country, and we saw it in 
the second year of a drought; yet I believe it to be a 
country of high promise for settlers of white race. In 
many ways it reminds one rather curiously of the great 
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