r house
boy, named Leyeye. He was a Masai. These proud and aristocratic savages
rarely condescend to take service of any sort except as herders; but
when they do they prove to be unusually efficient and intelligent. We
had also a Somali cook, and six ordinary bearers to do general labour.
This small safari we started off afoot for Juja. The whole lot cost us
about what we would pay one Chinaman on the Pacific Coast.

Next day we ourselves drove out in the mule buckboard. The rains were
on, and the road was very muddy. After the vital tropical fashion the
grass was springing tall in the natural meadows and on the plains and
the brief-lived white lilies and an abundance of ground flowers washed
the slopes with colour. Beneath the grass covering, the entire surface
of the ground was an inch or so deep in water. This was always most
surprising, for, apparently, the whole country should have been high
and dry. Certainly its level was that of a plateau rather than a bottom
land; so that one seemed always to be travelling at an elevation.
Nevertheless walking or riding we were continually splashing, and the
only dry going outside the occasional rare "islands" of the slight
undulations we found near the very edge of the bluffs above the rivers.
There the drainage seemed sufficient to carry off the excess. Elsewhere
the hardpan or bedrock must have been exceptionally level and near the
top of the ground.

Nothing nor nobody seemed to mind this much. The game splashed around
merrily, cropping at the tall grass; the natives slopped indifferently,
and we ourselves soon became so accustomed to two or three inches of
water and wet feet that after the first two days we never gave those
phenomena a thought.

The world above at this season of the year was magnificent. The African
heavens are always widely spacious, but now they seemed to have blown
even vaster than usual. In the sweep of the vision four or five heavy
black rainstorms would be trailing their skirts across an infinitely
remote prospect; between them white piled scud clouds and cumuli sailed
like ships; and from them reflected so brilliant a sunlight and behind
all showed so dazzling a blue sky that the general impression was of
a fine day. The rainstorms' gray veils slanted; tremendous patches of
shadow lay becalmed on the plains; bright sunshine poured abundantly its
warmth and yellow light.

So brilliant with both direct and reflected light and the values of
contra