MY BIRTHDAY 
328 
CH. XIl] 
exhibitions or, what is quite as bad-—though the two 
evils are usually found in different social strata—in a 
spirit of such luxurious self-indulgence as to render 
them at best harmless extravagances, and at worst 
forces which positively tend to the weakening of moral 
and physical fibre. 
On October 26 Tarlton, Kermit, Heller, and I started 
from the railroad station of Londiani for the Uasin 
Gishu Plateau and the ’Nzoi River, which flows not far 
from the foot of Mount Elgon. This stretch of country 
has apparently received its fauna from the shores of 
Lake Victoria Nyanza, and contains several kinds of 
antelope, and a race or variety of giraffe, the five-horned, 
which are not found to the eastward, in the region where 
we had already hunted. 
On the 27 th we were marching hard, and I had no 
chance of sport. I would have enjoyed a hunt, 
because it was my birthday. The year before I had 
celebrated my fiftieth birthday by riding my jumping 
horse, Roswell, over all the jumps in Rock Creek Park, 
at Washington. Roswell is a safe and good jumper, 
and a very easy horse to sit at a jump; he took me, 
without hesitation or error, over everything, from the 
water jump to the stone wall, the rails, and the bank, 
including a brush hurdle just over five feet and a half 
high. 
For the first four days our route led among rolling 
hills and along valleys and ravines, the country being so 
high that the nights were actually cold, although we 
crossed and recrossed the Equator. The landscape in its 
general effect called to mind Southern Oregon and 
Northern California rather than any tropical country. 
Some of the hills were bald, others wooded to the top ; 
there were wet meadows, and hill-sides covered with 
