follows upland, and yonder succeed mountains and hills-you lose
the sense of breadth and space and the toil of many days. The

feeling of onwardoutward extending distance is gone; and that
impression so indispensable to finite understanding-"here am I,

and what is beyond is to be measured by the length of my legs and
the toil of my days." You will not stop long enough on my plains

to realize their physicalextent nor their influence on the human
soul. If I mention them in a sentence, you dismiss them in a

thought. And that is something the plains themselves refuse to
permit you to do. Yet sometimes one must become a guide-book, and

bespeak his reader's imagination.
The country, then, wherein we travelled begins at the sea. Along

the coast stretches a low rolling country of steaming tropics,
grown with cocoanuts, bananas, mangoes, and populated by a happy,

half-naked race of the Swahilis. Leaving the coast, the country
rises through hills. These hills are at first fertile and green

and wooded. Later they turn into an almost unbrokenplateau of
thorn scrub, cruel, monotonous, almost impenetrable. Fix thorn

scrub in your mind, with rhino trails, and occasional openings
for game, and a few rivers flowing through palms and narrow

jungle strips; fix it in your mind until your mind is filled with
it, until you are convinced that nothing else can exist in the

world but more and more of the monotonous, terrible, dry,
onstretching desert of thorn.

Then pass through this to the top of the hills inland, and
journey over these hills to the highland plains.

Now sense and appreciate these wide seas of and the hills and
ranges of mountains rising from them, and their infinite

diversity of country-their rivers marked by ribbons of jungle,
their scattered-bush and their thick-bush areas, their grass

expanses, and their great distances extending far over
exceedingly wide horizons. Realize how many weary hours you must

travel to gain the nearest butte, what days of toil the view from
its top will disclose. Savour the fact that you can spend months

in its veriest corner without exhausting its possibilities. Then,
and not until then, raise your eyes to the low rising transverse

range that bands it to the west as the thorn desert bands it to
the east.

And on these ranges are the forests, the great bewildering
forests. In what looks like a grove lying athwart a little hill

you can lose yourself for days. Here dwell millions of savages in
an apparentlyuntouchedwilderness. Here rises a snow mountain on

the equator. Here are tangles and labyrinths, great bamboo
forests lost in folds of the mightiest hills. Here are the

elephants. Here are the swinging vines, the jungle itself.
Yet finally it breaks. We come out on the edge of things and look

down on a great gash in the earth. It is like a sunken kingdom in
itself, miles wide, with its own mountain ranges, its own rivers,

its own landscape features. Only on either side of it rise the
escarpments which are the true level of the plateau. One can

spend two months in this valley, too, and in the countries south
to which it leads. And on its farther side are the high plateau

plains again, or the forests, or the desert, or the great lakes
that lie at the source of the Nile.

So now, perhaps, we are a little prepared to go ahead. The
guide-book work is finished for good and all. There is the

steaming hot low coast belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt,
and the variedimmense plains, and the high mountain belt of the

forests, and again the variegated wide country of the Rift Valley
and the high plateau. To attempt to tell you seriatim and in

detail just what they are like is the task of an encyclopaedist.
Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the picture of

the country, the people, and the beasts.
IV. THE FIRST CAMP

Our very first start into the new country was made when we piled
out from the little train standingpatiently awaiting the good

pleasure of our descent. That feature strikes me with ever new
wonder-the accommodating way trains of the Uganda Railway have

of waiting for you. One day, at a little wayside station, C. and
I were idly exchanging remarks with the only white man in sight,

killing time until the engine should whistle to a resumption of
the journey. The guard lingered about just out of earshot. At the

end of five minutes C. happened to catch his eye, whereupon he
ventured to approach.

"When you have finished your conversation," said he politely, "we
are all ready to go on."

On the morning in question there were a lot of us to
disembark-one hundred and twenty-two, to be exact-of which four

were white. We were not yet acquainted with our men, nor yet with
our stores, nor with the methods of our travel. The train went

off and left us in the middle of a high plateau, with low ridges
running across it, and mountains in the distance. Men were

squabbling earnestly for the most convenient loads to carry, and
as fast as they had gained undisputed possession, they marked the

loads with some private sign of their own. M'ganga, the headman,
tall, fierce, big-framed and bony, clad in fez, a long black

overcoat, blue puttees and boots, stood stiff as a ramrod,
extended a rigid right arm and rattled off orders in a high

dynamic voice. In his left hand he clasped a bulgy umbrella, the
badge of his dignity and the symbol of his authority. The four

askaris, big men too, with masterful high-cheekboned
countenances, rushed here and there seeing that the orders were

carried out. Expostulations, laughter, the sound of quarrelling
rose and fell. Never could the combined volume of it all override

the firecracker stream of M'ganga's eloquence.
We had nothing to do with it all, but stood a little dazed,

staring at the novel scene. Our men were of many tribes, each
with its own cast of features, its own notions of what befitted

man's performance of his duties here below. They stuck together
each in its clan. A fine free individualism of personal adornment

characterized them. Every man dressed for his own satisfaction
solely. They hung all sorts of things in the distended lobes of

their ears. One had succeeded in inserting a fine big glittering
tobacco tin. Others had invented elaborate topiary designs in

their hair, shaving their heads so as to leave strange tufts,
patches, crescents on the most unexpected places. Of the

intricacy of these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various
sorts of treasure trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which

there were no locks, discarded huntingknives, tips of antelope
horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless

trifles plucked proudly from the rubbish heap. They were all
clothed. We had supplied each with a red blanket, a blue jersey,

and a water bottle. The blankets they were twisting most
ingeniously into turbans. Beside these they sported a great

variety of garments. Shooting coats that had seen better days, a
dozen shabby overcoats-worn proudly through the hottest

noons-raggety breeches and trousers made by some London tailor,
queer baggy homemades of the same persuasion, or quite simply the

square of cotton cloth arranged somewhat like a short tight
skirt, or nothing at all as the man's taste ran. They were many

of them amusing enough; but somehow they did not look entirely
farcical and ridiculous, like our negroes putting on airs. All

these things were worn with a simplicity of quiet confidence in
their entire fitness. And beneath the red blanket turbans the

half-wild savage faces peered out.
Now Mahomet approached. Mahomet was my personal boy. He was a

Somali from the Northwest coast, dusky brown, with the regular
clear-cut features of a Greek marble god. His dress was of neat

khaki, and he looked down on savages; but, also, as with all the
dark-skinned races, up to his white master. Mahomet was with me

during all my African stay, and tested out nobly. As yet, of
course, I did not know him.

"Chakula taiari," said he.
That is Swahili. It means literally "food is ready." After one