African Game Trails 
27 
died by his own hand. He 
was a mighty hunter, of 
bold and adventure-loving 
temper. With whites he 
was unsocial, living in this 
far-off region exactly like a 
native, and all alone among 
the natives; living in some 
respects too much like a na¬ 
tive. But, from the native 
stand-point, and without 
making any effort to turn 
the natives into anything 
except what they were, he 
did them good, and left a 
deep impression on their 
minds. They talked to us 
often about him, in many 
different places; they would 
not believe that he was 
dead; and when assured it 
was so they showed real 
grief. At Meru Boma, 
when we saw the Meru 
tribesmen dance, one of 
the songs they sung w;as: 
“Since Nyama Yango 
came, our sheep graze un¬ 
touched by the Samburu,” 
and, rather curiously, the 
Samburu sing a similar 
song reciting how he saved 
them from the fear of hav¬ 
ing their herds raided by the nomads far¬ 
ther north. 
After leaving this camp we journeyed up 
the Guaso Nyero for several days. The 
current was rapid and muddy, and there 
were beds of reeds and of the tall, graceful 
papyrus. The country roundabout was a 
mass of stony, broken hills, and the river 
wound down among these, occasionally 
cutting its way through deep gorges, and 
its course being continually broken by 
rapids. Whenever on our hunts we had to 
cross, it, we shouted and splashed and even 
fired shots, to scare the crocodiles. I shot 
one on a sandbar in the river. The man 
the rhino had wounded was carried along 
on a litter with the safari. 
Sometimes I left camp with my sais and 
gunbearer before dawn, starting in the light 
of the waning moon, and riding four or five 
hours before halting to-wait for the safari; 
on the way I had usually shot something for 
the table—a water-buck, impalla, or gazelle. 
Ivory-nut palms on the Guaso Nyero. 
From a photograph by Theodore Roosevelt. 
On another occasion Cuninghame and I 
spent the day hunting in the" waterless 
country, back of the river, where the heat 
at mid-day was terrific. We might not 
reach camp until after nightfall. Once, as 
we came to it in the dark, it seemed as if 
ghostly arms stretched above it; for the 
tents were under trees up which huge rub¬ 
ber vines had climbed, and their massive 
dead-white trunks and branches glimmered 
pale and ghostly in the darkness. 
Twice my gunbearers tried to show me 
a cheetah; but my eyes were too slow to 
catch the animal before it bounded off in 
safety among the bushes. Another time, 
after an excellent bit of tracking, the gun- 
bearers brought me up to a buffalo bull, 
standing for his noonday rest in the leafless 
thorns a mile from the river. I thought I 
held the heavy Holland straight for his 
shoulder, but I must have fired high; for 
though he fell to the shot he recovered at 
once. We followed the blood spoor for an 
