our return from Juja to Nairobi for a breathing space, this volume
comes to a logical conclusion. In it I have tried to give a fairly
comprehensive impression-it could hardly be a picture of so large a
subject-of a portion of East Equatorial Africa, its animals, and its
people. Those who are sufficiently interested will have an opportunity
in a succeeding volume of wandering with us even farther afield. The
low jungly coast region; the fierce desert of the Serengetti; the swift
sullen rhinoceros-haunted stretches of the Tsavo; Nairobi, the strangest
mixture of the twentieth centuries A.D. and B.C.; Mombasa with its wild,
barbaric passionate ebb and flow of life, of colour, of throbbing sound,
the great lions of the Kapiti Plains, the Thirst of the Loieta, the
Masai spearmen, the long chase for the greater kudu; the wonderful, high
unknown country beyond the Narossara and other affairs will there be
detailed. If the reader of this volume happens to want more, there he
will find it.

APPENDIX I

Most people are very much interested in how hot it gets in such tropics
as we traversed. Unfortunately it is very difficult to tell them.
Temperature tables have very little to do with the matter, for humidity
varies greatly. On the Serengetti at lower reaches of the Guaso Nyero
I have seen it above 110 degrees. It was hot, to be sure, but not
exhaustingly so. On the other hand, at 90 or 95 degrees the low coast
belt I have had the sweat run from me literally in streams; so that a
muddy spot formed wherever I stood still. In the highlands, moreover,
the nights were often extremely cold. I have recorded night temperatures
as low as 40 at 7000 feet of elevation; and noon temperatures as low 65.

Of more importance than the actual or sensible temperature of the air
is the power of the sun's rays. At all times of year this is practically
constant; for the orb merely swings a few degrees north and south of
the equator, and the extreme difference in time between its risings or
settings is not more than twenty minutes. This power is also practically
constant whatever the temperature of the air and is dangerous even on a
cloudy day, when the heat waves are effectually screened off, but when
the actinic rays are as active as ever. For this reason the protection
of helmet and spine pad should never be omitted, no matter what the
condition of the weather, between nine o'clock and four. A very brief
exposure is likely to prove fatal.