e Hills'. So an
Africander, originally from the south, Captain D., and I sent across a
few carriers with our personal effects, and ourselves rode over on
horseback.

Juja is on the Athi Plains. Between the Athi and Kapiti Plains runs a
range of low mountains around the end of which one can make his way as
around a promontory. The Hills' ostrich farm was on the highlands in the
bay on the other side of the promontory.

It was towards the close of the rainy season, and the rivers were up.
We had to swim our horses within a half-mile of Juja, and got pretty
wet. Shortly after crossing the Athi, however, five miles on, we emerged
on the dry, drained slopes from the hills. Here the grass was long, and
the ticks plentiful. Our horses' legs and chests were black with them;
and when we dismounted for lunch we ourselves were almost immediately
alive with the pests. In this very high grass the game was rather
scarce, but after we had climbed by insensible grades to the shorter
growth we began to see many hartebeeste, zebra, and gazelles, and a few
of the wildebeeste, or brindled gnus. Travel over these great plains and
through these leisurely low hills is a good deal like coastwise
sailing--the same apparently unattainable landmarks which, nevertheless,
are at last passed and left astern by the same sure but insensible
progress. Thus we drew up on apparently continuous hills, found wide
gaps between them, crossed them, and turned to the left along the other
side of the promontory. About five o'clock we came to the Hills'.

The ostrich farm is situated on the very top of a conical rise that
sticks up like an island close inshore to the semicircle of mountains in
which end the vast plains of Kapiti. Thus the Hills have at their backs
and sides these solid ramparts and face westward the immensities of
space. For Kapiti goes on over the edge of the world to unknown,
unguessed regions, rolling and troubled like a sea. And from that
unknown, on very still days, the snowy peak of Kilimanjaro peers out,
sketched as faintly against the sky as a soap bubble wafted upward and
about to disappear. Here and there on the plains kopjes stand like
islands, their stone tops looking as though thrust through the smooth
prairie surface from beneath. To them meandered long, narrow ravines
full of low brush, like thin, wavering streaks of gray. On these
kopjes--each of which had its name--and in these ravines we were to hunt
lions.

We began the a