360 
TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 
impenetrable, that half the time no man can follow their 
trails save by bending and crawling, and one cannot make 
out an object twenty yards ahead. It is extraordinary 
to see the places through which the bongo pass, and 
which are their chosen haunts. 
While Lord Delamere and I were hunting in vain, 
Kermit was more fortunate. He was the guest of 
Barclay Cole, Delamere’s brother-in-law. They took 
eight porters, and went into the forest, accompanied by 
four ’Ndorobo. They marched straight up to the 
bamboo and yellow-wood forest near the top of the 
Mau escarpment. They spent five days in hunting. 
The procedure was simply to find the trail of a herd, 
to follow it through the tangled woods as rapidly and 
noiselessly as possible until it was overtaken, and then 
to try to get a shot at the first patch of reddish hide of 
which they got a glimpse—for they never saw more than 
such a patch, and then only for a moment. The first 
day Kermit, firing at such a patch, knocked over the 
animal ; but it rose, and the tracks were so confused 
that even the keen eyes of the wild men could not pick 
out the right one. Next day they again got into a 
herd. This time Kermit was the first to see the game, 
all that was visible being a reddish patch the size of a 
man’s two hands, with a white stripe across it. Firing, 
he killed the animal, but it proved to be only half 
grown. Even the ’Ndorobo now thought it useless to 
follow the herd, but Kermit took one of them and 
started in pursuit. After a couple of hours’ trailing the 
herd w r as again overtaken, and again Kermit got a 
glimpse of the animals. He hit tw^o, and, selecting the 
trail with most blood, they followed it for three or four 
miles, until Kermit overtook and finished off the 
wounded bongo, a fine cow. 
Kermit always found them lying up during the 
