CH. XI] IN THE HOT COUNTRY AGAIN 289 
A long day’s march brought us down to the hot 
country. That evening we pitched our tents by a 
rapid brook bordered by palms, whose long, stiff fronds 
rustled ceaselessly in the wind. Monkeys swung in the 
tree-tops. On the march I shot a Kavirondo crane on 
the wing with the little Springfield, almost exactly 
repeating my experience with the other crane which I 
had shot three weeks before, except that on this occasion 
I brought down the bird with my third bullet, and then 
wasted the last two cartridges in the magazine at his 
companions. At dusk the donkeys were driven to a 
fire within the camp, and they stood patiently round it 
in a circle throughout the night, safe from lions and 
hyenas. 
Next day’s march brought us to another small 
tributary of the Guaso Nyero, a little stream twisting 
rapidly through the plain between sheer banks. Here 
and there it was edged with palms and beds of bul¬ 
rushes. We pitched the tents close to half a dozen 
flat-topped thorn-trees. We spent several days at this 
camp. Many kites came around the tents, but neither 
vultures nor ravens. The country was a vast plain 
bounded on almost every hand by chains of far-off 
mountains. In the south-west, just beyond the Equator, 
the snows of Kenia lifted toward the sky. To the 
north the barren ranges were grim with the grimness of 
the desert. The flats were covered with pale, bleached 
grass which waved all day long in the wind ; for though 
there were sometimes calms, or changes in the wind, on 
most of the days we were out it never ceased blowing 
from some point in the south. In places the parched 
soil was crumbling and rotten; in other places it was 
thickly strewn with volcanic stones. There were but 
few tracts over which a horse could gallop at speed, 
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