CHAPTER VII 
TREKKING THROUGH THE THIRST TO THE SOTIK 
On June 5 we started south from Kijabe to trek 
through “the thirst,” through the waterless country 
which lies across the way to the Sotik. 
The preceding Sunday at Nairobi I had visited 
the excellent French Catholic Mission, had been most 
courteously received by the fathers, had gone over their 
plantations and the school in which they taught the 
children of the settlers (much to my surprise, among 
them were three Parsee children, who were evidently 
put on a totally different plane from the other Indians, 
even the Goanese), and had been keenly interested in 
their account of their work and of the obstacles with 
which they met. 
At Kijabe I spent several exceedingly interesting 
hours at the American Industrial Mission. Its head, 
Mr. Hurlburt, had called on me in Washington at the 
White House in the preceding October, and I had then 
made up my mind that if the chance occurred I must 
certainly visit his mission. It is an interdenominational 
mission, and is carried on in a spirit which combines to 
a marked degree broad sanity and common sense with 
disinterested fervour. Of course, such work, under the 
conditions which necessarily obtain in East Africa, can 
only show gradual progress ; but I am sure that mis- 
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