At any
rate we cost them a night's sleep.
Next morning we took up our march through the deserted tracks
once more. Not a sign of human life did we encounter. About ten
o'clock we climbed down a tremendous gash of a box canyon with
precipitous cliffs. From below we looked back to see, perched
high against the skyline, the motionless figures of many savages
watching us from the crags. So we had had company after all, and
we had not known it. This canyon proved to be the boundary line.
With the same abruptness we passed again into friendly country.
(d) OUT THE OTHER SIDE
We left the jungle finally when we turned on a long angle away
from Kenia. At first the open country of the foothills was
closely cultivated with fields of rape and maize. We saw some of
the people breaking new soil by means of long pointed sticks. The
plowmen quite simply inserted the pointed end in the ground and
pried. It was very slow hard work. In other fields the grain
stood high and good. From among the stalks, as from a miniature
jungle, the little naked totos stared out, and the good-natured
women smiled at us. The magnificent peak of Kenia had now shaken
itself free of the forests. On its snow the sunrises and sunsets
kindled their fires. The flames of grass fires, too, could
plainly be made out, incredible distances away, and at daytime,
through the reek, were fascinating suggestions of distant rivers,
plains, jungles, and hills. You see, we were still practically on
the wide slope of Kenia's base, though the peak was many days
away, and so could look out over wide country.
The last half day of this we wandered literally in a rape field.
The stalks were quite above our heads, and we could see but a few
yards in any direction. In addition the track had become a
footpath not over two feet wide. We could occasionally look back
to catch glimpses of a pack or so bobbing along on a porter's
head. From our own path hundreds of other paths branched; we were
continually taking the wrong fork and moving back to set the
safari right before it could do likewise. This we did by drawing
a deep double line in the earth across the wrong trail. Then we
hustled on ahead to pioneer the way a little farther; our
difficulties were further complicated by the fact that we had
sent our horses back to Nairobi for fear of the tsetse fly, so we
could not see out above the corn. All we knew was that we ought
to go down hill.
At the ends of some of our false trails we came upon fascinating
little settlements: groups of houses inside brush enclosures,
with low wooden gateways beneath which we had to stoop to enter.
Within were groups of beehive houses with small naked children
and perhaps an old woman or old man seated cross-legged under a
sort of veranda.
