526 
African Game Trails 
started; and four hours later, in the bottom they improvised long chants in my honor, 
of a deep ravine, Cuninghame found a and feasted royally. 
pool of green water in a scooped-out cavity We spent one entire day with the row- 
in the rock. It was a pleasant sight to see boat in a series of lagoons near camp, which 
the thirsty porters drink. Then they sat marked an inlet of the lake. We did not 
down, built fires and boiled their food; and get any hippo, but it was a most interesting 
went on in good heart. day. A broad belt of papyrus fringed the 
Two or three times we crossed singularly lagoons and jutted out between them. The 
beautiful ravines, the trail winding through straight green stalks with their feathery 
narrow clefts heads rose high 
Naivasha. It wearisome after 
ed by hills and ful,for each reed 
mountains, the . . ..- * . j s slender, 
shores broken . . _. ^ graceful, with 
, , Rhino shot from Salt-marsh Camp, of, the “Keitloa type with rear ? . ’ _ 
by rocky prom- hom longer than front horn.—Page 520. J ltS pale flower- 
ontories, and in- From a photograph by Edmund Heiier. ing crown ; and 
dented by papy- they are typical 
rus-fringed bays. Next morning we shifted of the tropics, and their mere sight suggests 
camp four miles to a place on the farm, and a vertical sun and hot, steaming swamps, 
near the house, of the Messrs. Attenborough, where great marsh beasts feed and wallow 
settlers on the shores of the lake, who treated and bellow, amidst a teeming reptilian life, 
us with the most generous courtesy and hos- A fringe of papyrus here and there adds 
pitality—as, indeed, did all the settlers we much to the beauty of a lake, and also to the 
met. They were two brothers; one had lived beauty of the river pools, where clumps of 
twenty years on the Pacific Coast, mining in them grow under the shade of the vine- 
the Sierras, and the other had just retired tangled tropical trees, 
from the British navy, with the rank of com- The open waters of the lagoons were 
mander; they were able to turn their hands covered with water-lilies, bearing purple 
to anything, and were just the men for work or sometimes pink flowers. Across the 
in a new country—for a new country is a broad lily pads ran the curious “lily trot- 
poor place for the weak and incompetent, ters,” or jacanas, richly colored birds, with 
whether of body or mind. They had a toes so long and slender that the lily pads 
steam launch and a big heavy row-boat, and would support them without sinking. They 
they most kindly and generously put both were not shy, and their varied coloring—a 
at our disposal for hippo hunting. bright chestnut being the most conspicuous 
At this camp I presented the porters with hue—and singular habits made them very 
twenty-five sheep, as a recognition of their conspicuous. There was a wealth of bird 
good conduct and hard work; whereupon life in the lagoons. Small gulls, somewhat 
