NAIROBI AND MT. KENYA 
108 
frequents, in which boulders hidden by high grass and deep ant-bear 
holes excavated in the soil keep the hunter in continual danger. 
The risk of the sport consists in the fact that he who would over¬ 
take and spear one of these animals must do so at full gallop, for they 
are adepts in rapid transit. Yet the hunter must give his attention 
at once to the ground he is traversing and to the brute he is pursuing. 
When the pig is neared within a few yards, the perils of the ground 
must be neglected and attention given solely to the brute, which may, 
turn and charge upon its pursuer at any moment. A stumble of the 
horse and a fall at such a critical instant is very dangerous, as the hog 
would be sure to attack the unhorsed man and seek to rip him up with 
its sharp tusks. In such a crisis the spear is a poor dependence, 
and the hunter would find it serviceable to have a revolver strapped 
to his thigh—for emergency use. 
To quote a well-known American aphorism: “You do not want a 
pistol often, but when you do, you want it very badly.” 
But neglecting for the time being these narratives of hunting 
ventures, let us follow the Roosevelt expedition farther into the land 
and look with the eyes of its members upon the huge brother mountain 
to Mount Kenya, the gigantic Mount Elgon, which lies more to the 
westward. This huge mountain mass is a natural phenomenon of 
great interest. While not so elevated as Mount Kenya—its height be¬ 
ing about 14,200 feet—it surpasses it greatly, and probably every other 
volcano in the world, in its enormous superficial extent. It is not a 
mountain only; it is a country. Its mass covers an area equal to that 
of the whole of Switzerland. If we could imagine this Alpine land as 
occupied by a single huge mountain mass of great elevation, we would 
gain some definite idea of the size of this mammoth African volcano. 
We may judge something of this when told that its crater alone is 
about thirty miles across. 
Caves, many of them, exist on the sides of this mountain mass at 
an average height of 8,000 feet, they lying at the bottom of abrupt 
terraces. They appear to have arisen in the first place from the action 
of water, and give undue evidence of having been enlarged by the 
hands of man. They undoubtedly have been inhabited during a long 
period of past time. There is reason to believe that Elgon was a great 
