African Game Trails 
649 
their bloom. The climbing morning-glories 
sometimes completely covered a tree with 
their pale purple flowers; and other blos¬ 
soming vines spangled the green over which 
their sprays were flung with 
masses of bright yellow. 
Four days’ march from Nai- 
vasha, where we again left 
Mearns and Loring, took us 
to Neri. Our line of march 
lay across the high plateaus 
and mountain chains of the 
Aberdare range. The steep, 
twisting trail was slippery with 
mud. Our last camp, at an 
altitude of about ten thou¬ 
sand feet, was so cold that 
the water froze in the basins, 
and the shivering porters slept 
in numbed discomfort. There 
was constant fog and rain, 
and on the highest plateau the 
bleak landscape, shrouded in 
driving mist, was northern to 
all the senses. The ground was 
rolling, and through the deep 
valleys ran brawling brooks of 
clear water; one little foaming 
stream, suddenly tearing down 
a hillside, might have been that 
which Childe Roland crossed 
before he came to the dark 
tower. 
There was not much game, 
and all of it moved abroad 
by night. One frosty evening 
we killed a dyker by shining 
its eyes. We saw old ele¬ 
phant tracks. The high, wet 
levels swarmed with mice and 
shrews, just as our arctic and 
alpine meadows swarm with 
them. The species were really 
widely different from ours, but 
many of them showed curious 
analogies in form and habits; there was 
a short-tailed shrew much like our mole 
shrew, and a long-haired, short-tailed rat 
like a very big meadow mouse. They were 
so plentiful that we frequently saw them, 
and the grass was cut up by their runways. 
They were abroad during the day, probably 
finding the nights too cold, and in an hour 
Heller trapped a dozen or two individuals 
belonging to seven species and five different 
genera. There were not many birds so high 
up. There were deer ferns; and Spanish 
moss hung from the trees and even from 
the bamboos. The flowers included utterly 
strange forms, as for instance giant lobelias 
ten feet-high. Others we know in our gar¬ 
dens ; geraniums and red-hot-pokers, which 
in places turned the glades to a fire color. 
Yet others either were like, or looked like, 
our own wild flowers: orange lady-slippers, 
red gladiolus on stalks six feet high, pansy¬ 
like violets, and blackberries and yellow 
raspberries. There were stretches of bushes 
bearing masses of small red or large white 
flowers shaped somewhat like columbines, 
or like the garden balsam; the red flower 
