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On Mount Kenia, the high Guas Ngishu Plateau and Mount Elgon, the thought of sickness was entirely absent. These districts were found to be salubrious and free from ticks and mosquitoes. Snakes Before going to Africa, I must admit that the thought of serpents occasioned much anxiety. I didn't like the idea of tramping around through grass and reeds where poisonous snakes might be found.
This, then, was the dramatic situation at about twelve o'clock noon on November fifteenth, eight miles east of the Nzoia River, near Mount Elgon: Eight cow elephants, two totos, one ex-president with a double-barreled cordite rifle thirty yards away, supported by three other hunters similarly armed, with native gunbearers held in the rear as a supporting column.
For our second expedition we selected the Guas Ngishu Plateau, the Nzoia River, and Mount Elgon. It is a long trip which involves elaborate preparation and some difficulty in keeping up supplies for the camp and the porters.
We ran across this beautiful antelope only on the Guas Ngishu Plateau, although it is found in one or two other districts in East Africa. In all our weeks of rambling on the high plains near Mount Elgon I think I saw several hundred head of topi, always shy and quick to take alarm.
We found them only in one place, on the banks of the Nzoia River near Mount Elgon and the Uganda border. They never were more than four or five hundred yards from the river and could not be driven away. If they were startled at one point they would circle around and quickly get back to the river at some other point. They seemed to become homesick unless they could see the river near by.
It might easily have been mistaken for a bare fork of the tree, with the mottled shadows of the leaves cast upon it. Along the Tana River I saw several herds of giraffe, perhaps fifty head in all, but it was on the great stretches of the scrub country that slopes down from Mount Elgon that I saw the great herds of them.
Thomas Cook and Son have not yet penetrated that district with schedules and time cards and luggage labels; so if your purpose in traveling is to get a grand assortment of stickers on your trunks and hand-bags, it is useless to include Mount Elgon in your itinerary.
The burden of Kermit's message was "salt, salt, salt!" and porters and second gunbearers to help with the skinning. So James L. Clark, who has been connected with the American Museum of History for some time and who was with us on the Mount Elgon trip to help Mr. Akeley with the preparation of the group, started off with a lot of porters laden with salt for preserving the skins.
One or more of these were to be killed by Colonel Roosevelt and one by myself. It seemed promising that the cows, calf, and young bull could be got on Mount Elgon, but the likelihood of getting the big bulls was far from encouraging.
Lieutenant-Governor Jackson thought we might be successful if we directed our efforts to the southeastern slopes of the mountain and avoided the northeastern slopes along the River Turkwel, which had been hunted a good deal by sportsmen and poachers. If we were unable to get the big bulls on Elgon it might be necessary to make a special trip into Uganda for them.
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