y folds in the earth we reached
Eldoma Ravine, a subcommissioner's _boma_ that looks for all the world
like a mountain health resort. From the hill upon which the station is
situated one may look across the Great Rift Valley, two thousand feet
below, and stretching away for miles across, like a Grand Canon of
Arizona without any mountains in it. Strong stone walls protect the
white residence, for this is a section of the country that has suffered
much from native uprisings during the last few years. We called on the
solitary white resident one evening, and, true to the creed of the
Briton, he had dressed for dinner. The sight of a man in a dinner-coat
miles from a white man and leagues from a white woman was something to
remember and marvel at.

Northward from Eldoma Ravine for days we marched, sometimes in dense
forests so thick that a man could scarcely force himself through the
undergrowth that flanked the trail, and sometimes through upland meadows
so deep in tall yellow grass as to suggest a field of waving grain, then
through miles of country studded with the gnarled thorn tree that looks
so much like our apple trees at home. It was as though we were
traversing an endless orchard, clean, beautiful, and exhilarating in the
cool winds of the African highlands. And then, all suddenly, we came to
the end of the trees, and before us, like a great, heaving yellow sea,
lay the Guas Ngishu Plateau that stretches northward one hundred miles
and always above seven thousand feet in altitude.

Far ahead, like a little knob of blue, was Sergoi Hill, forty miles
away, and beyond, in a fainter blue, were the hills that mark the limit
of white man's passport. On the map that district is marked: "Natives
probably treacherous." Off to the left, a hundred miles away, the dim
outline of Mount Elgon rose in easy slopes from the horizon. Elgon, with
its elephants, was our goal, and in between were the black-maned lions
that we hoped to meet.

It would be hard to exaggerate the charm of this climate. And yet this,
one thought, was equatorial Africa, which, in the popular imagination,
is supposed to be synonymous with torrential rains, malignant fevers,
and dense jungles of matted vegetation. It was more like the friendly
stretches of Colorado scenery at the time of year when the grasses of
the valley are dotted with flowers of many colors and the sun shines
down upon you with genial warmth.

[Drawing: _A Night on the Equator_]

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