144 
African Game Trails 
seconds! The first half dozen spears had 
done the work. Three of the spear blades 
had gone clear through the body, the points 
projecting several inches; and these, and 
one or two others, including the one he had 
seized in his jaws, had been twisted out of 
shape in the terrible death struggle. 
We at once attended to the two wounded 
men. Treating their wounds with anti¬ 
septic was painful, and so, while the opera¬ 
tion was in progress, I told them, through 
Kirke, that I would give each a heifer. A 
Nandi prizes his cattle rather more than his 
wives; and each sufferer smiled broadly at 
the news, and forgot all about the pain of 
his wounds. 
Then the warriors, raising their shields 
above their heads, and chanting the deep- 
toned victory song, marched with a slow, 
dancing step around the dead body of the 
lion; and this savage dance of triumph 
ended a scene of as fierce interest and ex¬ 
citement as I ever hope to see. 
The Nandi marched back by themselves, 
carrying the two wounded men on their 
shields. We rode to camp by a round¬ 
about way, on the chance that we might see 
another lion. The afternoon waned and we 
cast long shadows before us as we rode 
across the vast lonely plain. The game 
stared at us as we passed; a cold wind blew 
in our faces, and the tall grass waved cease¬ 
lessly; the sun set behind a sullen cloud 
bank; and then, just at nightfall, the tents 
glimmered white through the dusk. 
When we left Nairobi it was with real 
regret that we said good-by to the many 
friends who had been so kind to us; offi¬ 
cials, private citizens, almost every one we 
had met—including Sir Percy Girouard, 
the new governor. At Kijabe the men and 
women from the American Mission—and 
the children too—were down at the station 
to wish us good luck; and at Nakuru the 
settlers from the neighborhood gathered on 
the platform to give us a farewell cheer. 
The following morning we reached Kisumu 
on Lake Victoria Nyanza. It is in the 
Kavirondo country, where the natives, both 
men and women, as a rule go absolutely 
naked, although they are peaceable and in¬ 
dustrious. In the native market they had 
brought in baskets, iron spade heads, and 
food, to sell to the native and Indian traders 
who had their booths round about; the 
meat market, under the trees, was espe-' 
dally interesting. 
At noon we embarked in a smart little 
steamer, to cross' the lake. Twenty-four 
hours later we landed at Entebbe, the seatof 
the English Governor of Uganda. Through¬ 
out our passage the wind hardly ruffled the 
smooth surface of the lake. As we steamed 
away from the eastern shore the mountains 
behind us and on our right hand rose harsh 
and barren, yet with a kind of forbidding 
beauty. Dark clouds hung over the land 
we had left, and a rainbow stretched across 
their front. At nightfall, as the red sunset 
faded, the lonely waters of the vast inland 
sea stretched, ocean-like, west and south 
into a shoreless gloom. Then the darkness 
deepened, the tropic stars blazed overhead, 
and the light of the half moon drowned in 
silver the embers of the sunset: 
Next morning we steamed along and 
across the equator; the last time we were 
to cross it, for thenceforth our course lay 
northward. We passed by many islands, 
green with meadow and forest, beautiful in 
the bright sunshine, but empty with the 
emptiness of death. A decade previously, 
these islands were thronged with tribes 
of fisher folk; their villages studded the 
shores, and their long canoes, planks held 
together with fibre, furrowed the surface of 
the lake. Then, from out of the depths of 
the Congo forest came the dreadful scourge 
of the sleeping sickness, and smote the 
doomed people who dwelt beside the Vic¬ 
torian Nile, and on the coasts of the Nyanza 
Lakes and in the lands between. Its agent 
was a biting fly, brother to the tsetse whose 
bite is fatal to domestic animals. This fly 
dwells in forest, beside lakes and rivers; 
and wherever it dwells after the sleeping, 
sickness came it was found that man could 
not live. In this country, between, and 
along the shores of, the great lakes, two 
hundred thousand people died in slow tor¬ 
ment, before the hard-taxed wisdom and 
skill of medical science and governmental 
administration could work any betterment 
whatever in the situation. Men still die by 
thousands, and the disease is slowly spread¬ 
ing into fresh districts. But it has proved 
possible to keep. it within limits in the 
regions already affected; yet only by ab¬ 
solutely abandoning certain districts, and 
by clearing all the forest and brush in tracts 
which serve as barriers to the fly, and which 
