hat stream down to its
joining with the Tsavo. About half-past one we passed our safari boys.
We had intended to stop and replenish their canteens from our
water-drums; but they told us they had encountered a stray and
astonishing shower, and did not need more. We left them trudging
cheerfully across the desert. They had travelled most of the night
before, would do the same in the night to come, and should reach our
camping-place about noon of the next day.

We ourselves stopped about four o'clock. In a few hours we had come a
hard three days' march. Over the side went our goods. We bade the German
a very affectionate farewell; for he was still to fill our drums from
one of the streams out of Kilimanjaro and deliver them to us on his
return trip next day. We then all turned to and made camp. The scrub
desert here was exactly like the scrub desert for the last sixty miles.

The next morning we were up and off before sunrise. In this job time was
a very large element of the contract. We must find our fringe-eared oryx
before our water supply gave out. Therefore we had resolved not to lose
a moment.

The sunrise was most remarkable--lace work, flat clouds, with burnished
copper-coloured clouds behind glowing through the lace. We admired it
for some few moments. Then one of us happened to look higher. There,
above the sky of the horizon, apparently suspended in mid-air half-way
to the zenith, hung like delicate bubbles the double snow-cloud peaks of
Kilimanjaro. Between them and the earth we could apparently see clear
sky. It was in reality, of course, the blue-heat haze that rarely leaves
these torrid plains. I have seen many mountains in all parts of the
world, but none as fantastically insubstantial; as wonderfully lofty; as
gracefully able to yield, before clouds and storms and sunrise glows,
all the space in infinity they could possibly use, and yet to tower
above them serene in an upper space of its own. Nearly every morning of
our journey to come we enjoyed this wonderful vision for an hour or so.
Then the mists closed in. The rest of the day showed us a grayish sky
along the western horizon, with apparently nothing behind it.

In the meantime we were tramping steadily ahead over the desert;
threading the thorn scrub, crossing the wide shallow grass-grown swales;
spying about us for signs of game. At the end of three or four miles we
came across some ostrich and four hartebeeste. This encouraged us to
think we mi