ll white clad, a
long fine linen robe reaching to his feet; and one of the lacelike skull
caps he was so very skilful at making.

That will do for a preliminary sketch. If you follow these pages, you
will hear more of him; he is worth it.

VI. THE FIRST GAME CAMP

In the review of "first" impressions with which we are concerned, we
must now skip a week or ten days to stop at what is known in our diaries
as the First Ford of the Guaso Nyero River.

These ten days were not uneventful. We had crossed the wide and
undulating plains, had paused at some tall beautiful falls plunging
several hundred feet into the mysteriousness of a dense forest on
which we looked down. There we had enjoyed some duck, goose and snipe
shooting; had made the acquaintance of a few of the Masai, and had
looked with awe on our first hippo tracks in the mud beside a tiny
ditchlike stream. Here and there were small game herds. In the light of
later experience we now realize that these were nothing at all; but at
the time the sight of full-grown wild animals out in plain sight was
quite wonderful. At the close of the day's march we always wandered out
with our rifles to see what we could find. Everything was new to us,
and we had our men to feed. Our shooting gradually improved until we had
overcome the difficulties peculiar to this new country and were doing as
well as we could do anywhere.

Now, at the end of a hard day through scrub, over rolling bold hills,
and down a scrub brush slope, we had reached the banks of the Guaso
Nyero.

At this point, above the junction of its principal tributary rivers,
it was a stream about sixty or seventy feet wide, flowing swift between
high banks. A few trees marked its course, but nothing like a jungle.
The ford was in swift water just above a deep still pool suspected
of crocodiles. We found the water about waist deep, stretched a rope
across, and forcibly persuaded our eager boys that one at a time was
about what the situation required. On the other side we made camp on
an open flat. Having marched so far continuously, we resolved to settle
down for a while. The men had been without sufficient meat; and we
desired very much to look over the country closely, and to collect a few
heads as trophies.

Perhaps a word might not come amiss as to the killing of game. The case
is here quite different from the condition of affairs at home. Here
animal life is most extraordinarily abundant; it furnishes