African Game Trails 
33 
riedly back to the thorn-trees and the open 
country. We had plenty of meat in camp, 
and I had completed my series of this spe¬ 
cies of water-buck for the museum; and I 
was glad there was no need to molest them. 
The porters were enjoying the rest and 
the abundance of meat. They were lying 
about camp or were scattered up and down 
stream fishing. When, walking back, I 
came to the outskirts of camp, I was at¬ 
tracted by the buzzing and twanging of the 
harp; there was the harper and two friends, 
all three singing to his accompaniment. I 
called “Yambo ” (greeting), and they 
grinned and stood up, shouting“ Yambo” 
in return. In camp a dozen men were still 
at work at the giraffe skin, and they were all 
singing loudly, under the lead of my gun- 
bearer, Gouvimarli, who always acted as 
shanty man, or improvisatore, on such 
occasions. 
For a week we now trekked steadily 
south, across the equator, heel and toe 
marching, to Neri. Our first day’s jour¬ 
ney took us to a gorge riven in the dry 
mountain. Half-way up it, in a side pock¬ 
et, was a deep pool, at the foot of a sloping 
sheet of rock, down which a broad, shallow 
dent showed where the torrents swept dur¬ 
ing the rains. In the trees around the 
pool black drongo shrikes called in bell¬ 
like tones, and pied hornbills flirted their 
long tails as they bleated and croaked. 
The water was foul, but in a dry country 
one grows gratefully to accept as water any- 
[} thing that is next. Klipspringers and ba¬ 
boons were in the sheer hills around; and 
among the rocks were hyraxes, looking like 
our Rocky Mountain conies or Little Chief 
hares, queer diurnal rats, and bright, blue- 
green lizards with orange heads. Rhinos 
drank at this pool; we frequently saw them 
on our journey, but always managed to 
avoid wounding their susceptibilities, and 
so escaped an encounter. Each day we 
endeavored to camp a couple of hours 
before sundown so as to give the men 
plenty of chance to get firewood, pitch the 
tents, and put everything in order. Some¬ 
times we would make an early start; in 
which case we would breakfast in the 
open while in the east the crescent of the 
dying moon hung over the glow that her¬ 
alded the sunrise. 
As we reached the high, rolling downs 
the weather grew cooler, and many flowers 
appeared; those of the aloes were bright 
red, standing on high stalks above the clump 
of fleshy, spined leaves, which were hand¬ 
somely mottled, like a snake’s back. As I 
rode at the head of the safari I usually, in 
the course of the day, shot a buck of some 
kind for the table; I had not time to stalk, 
but simply took the shots as they, came, 
generally at long range. One day I shot 
an eland, an old blue bull. We needed the 
skin for the museum, and as there was 
water near by we camped where we were; I 
I had already shot a water-buck, and this 
and the eland together gave the entire sa¬ 
fari a feast of meat. 
On another occasion an eland herd af¬ 
forded me fun, although no profit. I was 
mounted on Brownie, the zebra-shaped 
pony. Brownie would still occasionally run 
off when I dismounted to shoot (a habit 
that had cost me an eland bull); but he 
loved to gallop after game. We came on a 
herd of eland in an open plain; they were 
directly in our path. We were in the coun¬ 
try where the ordinary, or Livingstone’s 
eland, grades into the Patterson’s; and I 
knew that the naturalists wished an addi¬ 
tional bull’s head for the museum. So I 
galloped toward the herd; and for the next 
fifteen or twenty minutes I felt as if I had 
renewed my youth and was in the cow 
camps of the West, a quarter of a century 
ago. Eland are no faster than range cat¬ 
tle. Twice I rounded up the herd—just as 
once in the Yellowstone Park I rounded up 
a herd of wapiti for John Burroughs to look 
at—and three times I cut out of the herd a 
big animal, which, however, in each case, 
proved to be a cow. There were no big 
bulls, only cows and young stock; but I en¬ 
joyed the gallop. 
From Neri we marched through mist and 
rain, across the cold Aberdare table-lands; 
and in the forenoon of October 20 we saw 
from the top of the second Aberdare escarp¬ 
ment the blue waters of beautiful Lake 
Naivasha. On the next day we reached 
Nairobi. 
Vol. XLVIII.—4 
