262 
EAST AFRICA AND ITS BIG GAME. 
LETTER FROM SIR R. G. HARVEY, 
Including an Account of a Trip up the Tana River. 
My dear Johnny, —According to your wishes, I send you a short 
account of our last expedition to East Africa, which altogether 
lasted ten months. We started from Mombasa early in 
Fehurary with 290 Africans, six Goanese, and one Indian 
servant, in charge of Martin, who, with Greenfield, Hunter, 
and myself, made up the caravan. We had with us 130 
Sniders, twenty tower muskets, two Martini-Henrys, and ten 
Colts repeating-rifles, and with our gun-bearers and selves were 
just 180 men under arms. 
We took up our old quarters at Taveta, and went over most 
of the old ground of the year before, with the exception of the 
country near Lake Jipe. We also went considerably farther 
west towards Mount Meru, and north-east up to the Ukambani 
hills. I11 the Meru direction we soon got among the Masai, 
and notwithstanding that two large parties of warriors were 
absent fighting in Ukambani and near Pangani, they gave us so 
much trouble that, after a few days, we were glad to leave them. 
We were much struck with the enormous amount of cattle in 
their country and the tameness of the wild animals, which 
allowed us generally to approach within two hundred yards, 
often indeed much nearer, without being disturbed. The quan¬ 
tity of Masai kraals and the number of cattle grazing made 
rifle-shooting positively dangerous, as the wounding of one of 
their animals would probably at once have formed a casus belli. 
Here we found large quantities of G. Thomsoni, much resembling 
the common chikara of India, but much more brightly coloured, 
and with a dark stripe along their flanks. Their horns are also 
longer and straighter, and do not diverge so much. 
In the Ukambani direction we found immense masses of game, 
especially oryx and wildebeest, and considerable numbers of 
