the elephant when you return."

He then instructed the young man to accompany us for the purpose of
bringing back the presents we had promised. We shook hands in farewell,
and so parted from this friendly and powerful chief.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] V.'s native name--the Master with the Red Beard.

XLIII.

THE TOPI CAMP.

At the next camp we stayed for nearly a week.

The country was charming. Mountains surrounded the long ellipse, near
one edge of which we had pitched our tents. The ellipse was some ten
miles long by four or five wide, and its surface rolled in easy billows
to a narrow neck at the lower end. There we could just make out in the
far distance a conical hill partly closing the neck. Atop the hill was a
Masai manyatta, very tiny, with indistinct crawling red and brown
blotches that meant cattle and sheep. Beyond the hill, and through the
opening in the ellipse, we could see to another new country of hills and
meadows and forest groves. In this clear air they were microscopically
distinct. No blue of atmosphere nor shimmer of heat blurred their
outlines. They were merely made small.

Our camp was made in the open above a tiny stream. We saw wonderful
sunrises and sunsets, and always spread out before us was the sweep of
our plains and the unbroken ramparts that hemmed us in. From these
mountains meandered small stream-ways marked by narrow strips of trees
and brush, but the most of the valley was of high green grass.
Occasional ant hills ten feet tall rose conical from the earth; and the
country was pleasingly broken and modelled, so that one continually
surmounted knolls, low, round ridges, and the like. Of such conditions
are surprises made.

The elevation here was some 7,000 feet, so that the nights were cold and
the days not too warm. Our men did not fancy this change of weather. A
good many of them came down with the fever always latent in their
systems, and others suffered from bronchial colds.

At one time we had down sick eleven men out of our slender total.
However, I believe, in spite of these surface symptoms, that the cold
air did them good. It certainly improved our own appetites and staying
power.

In the thirty or forty square miles of our valley were many herds of
varied game. We here for the first time found Neuman's hartebeeste. The
type at Narossara, and even in Lengetto, was the common Coke's
hartebeeste, so that between these closely allied species there
interposes at th