320 
TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 
was Captain Douglas Pennant, of the British Army. 
When we went north to Kenia he went south to the 
Sotik. There he made a fine bag of lions ; but, having 
wounded a leopard and followed it into cover, it sud¬ 
denly sprang on him, apparently from a tree. His life 
was saved by his Somali gun-bearer, who blew out the 
leopard’s brains as it bore him to the ground, so that it 
had time to make only one bite ; but this bite just 
missed crushing in the skull, broke the jaw, tore off one 
ear, and caused ghastly wreck. He spent some weeks 
in the hospital at Nairobi, and then went for further 
treatment to England, his place in the hospital being 
taken by another man who had been injured by a 
leopard. 
There had been quite a plague of wild beasts in 
Nairobi itself. One family had been waked at midnight 
by a leopard springing on the roof of the house, and 
thence to an adjacent shed. It finally spent a couple 
of hours on the veranda. A lion had repeatedly 
wandered at night through the outlying (the residen¬ 
tial) portion of the town. Dr. Milne, the head of the 
Government Medical Department, had nearly run into 
it on his bicycle, and, as a measure of precaution, guests 
going out to dinner usually carried spears or rifles. One 
night I dined with the Provincial Commissioner, Mr. 
Hobley, and the next with the town clerk, Captain 
Sanderson. In each case the hostess, the host, and the 
house were all delightful, and the evening, just like a 
very pleasant evening spent anywhere in civilization. 
The houses were only half a mile apart; and yet on the 
road between them a fortnight previously a lady on a 
bicycle, wheeling down to a rehearsal of “ Trial by 
Jury,” had been run into and upset by a herd of 
frightened zebras. One of my friends, Captain Smith, 
