000
inhabitants, supplied with every modern comfort and luxury, including a
well laid-out race course; and after a short trip to Lake Victoria
Nyanza and Uganda, we made our way back to the Eldama Ravine, which
lies some twenty miles north of Landiani Station in the province of
Naivasha. Here we started in earnest on our big game expedition, which
I am glad to say proved to be a most delightful and interesting one in
every way. The country was lovely, and the climate cool and bracing. We
all got a fair amount of sport, our bag including rhino, hippo,
waterbuck, reedbuck, hartebeeste, wildebeeste, ostrich, impala, oryx,
roan antelope, etc.; but for the present I must confine myself to a
short account of how I was lucky enough to shoot a specimen of an
entirely new race of eland.

Our party of five, including one lady who rode and shot equally
straight, left the Eldama Ravine on January 22, and trekked off in an
easterly direction across the Laikipia Plateau. As the trail which we
were to take was very little known and almost impossible to follow
without a guide, Mr. Foaker, the District Officer at the Ravine, very
kindly procured us a reliable man--a young Uashin Gishu Masai named
Uliagurma. But as he could not speak a word of Swahili, we had also to
engage an interpreter, an excellent, cheery fellow of the same tribe
named Landaalu; and he in his turn possessed a kinsman who insisted on
coming too, although he was no earthly use to us. Our route took us
through the Solai Swamp, over the Multilo and Subu Ko Lultian ranges,
and across many unexpected rivers and streamlets. On our first march I
noticed that Uliagurma, our kirongozi (guide), was suffering extremely,
though uncomplainingly, from earache, so I told him to come to me when
we got to camp and I would see what I could do for him. Strange to say,
my doctoring proved most successful, and Uliagurma was so grateful that
he spread my fame as a "medicine-man" far and wide among the natives
wherever we trekked. The consequence was that men, women and children
in every state of disease and crippledom came and besieged our camps,
begging for some of the magical dawa (medicine). I used to do what I
could, and only hope I did not injure many of them; but it was
heartrending to see some of the quite hopeless cases I was expected to
cure.

After we had climbed the Subu Ko Lultian and got a footing on the
plateau, we pitched our camp on the banks of the Angarua river, where