missionaries journeying to their stations further inland. They were
waiting for their camp equipment to arrive, but their porters had been
considerably delayed by some very heavy rain, which of course made the
roads bad and the tents about double their usual weight. The men of the
party were expected every moment with the porters, but there was as yet
no sign of the little caravan, and as a matter of fact it did not
arrive until long after nightfall. In these circumstances it was
perhaps a great blessing that I happened to be there; and as the ladies
were both very tired and hungry, I was glad to be able to place my tent
at their disposal and to offer them as good a dinner as it was possible
to provide in the wilds. It is indeed wonderful what dangers and
hardships these delicately nurtured ladies will face cheerfully in
order to carry out their self-appointed mission.

When they had left next morning to resume their journey, I started out
and made a search up and down the river for the proper position for my
temporary bridge. After a thorough examination of all the possible
situations, I chose the most suitable and pitched my tent close to it
for a night or two while I made the necessary calculations for carrying
out the work. The crossing on which I had decided had to be approached
by a somewhat sharp curve in the line, and in laying this out with the
theodolite I experienced considerable difficulty, as for some reason or
other I could not make the last peg on the curve come anywhere near the
tangent point where the curve should link up with the straight. I
repeated the whole operation time after time, but always with the same
result. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there must be some
mistake in the table of angles from which I had been working, so I
started to work them out for myself and soon discovered a serious
misprint. This being rectified in my calculations, I proceeded to lay
out the curve again, when at last everything came out accurately and to
my satisfaction.

After I had pegged out this temporary diversion of the line, I thought
I richly deserved a few hours' play, and accordingly determined to try
my luck after lions up-stream towards the source of the Athi. The
river--which runs almost due north here, before taking a turn eastward
to the Indian Ocean--forms part of the western boundary of the Athi
Plains, and is fringed all along its course by a belt of thorny
hardwood trees. In some places t