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We were both struck with the gorgeousness of a topi motor-rug made of three skins, with these pearl spots as accents in the corners. To our ambitions and hopes we added more topi. Our journey to the Narossara River lasted three days in all. We gained an outlying spur of the blue mountains, and skirted their base.
In the country between the Mau Escarpment and the Narossara Mountains we found the feed eaten down to the earth two months before the next rainy season. In the meantime the few settlers are hard put to it to buy cattle at any price wherewith to stock their new farms. The situation is an anomaly which probably cannot continue.
Then two days should land us at the Narossara. There we must leave our ox wagon and push on with our tiny safari. We planned to relay back for porters from our different camps. That was our whole plan. Our transport rider's object in starting this night was to reach the Kedong River, and there to outspan until our arrival next day. The cattle would thus get a good feed and rest.
The low jungly coast region; the fierce desert of the Serengetti; the swift sullen rhinoceros-haunted stretches of the Tsavo; Nairobi, the strangest mixture of the twentieth centuries A.D. and B.C.; Mombasa with its wild, barbaric passionate ebb and flow of life, of colour, of throbbing sound, the great lions of the Kapiti Plains, the Thirst of the Loieta, the Masai spearmen, the long chase for the greater kudu; the wonderful, high unknown country beyond the Narossara and other affairs will there be detailed.
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 this point only the barriers of a climb and a forest. These animals and the zebra were the most plentiful of the game.
In fact he was a little hipped on what the "dear n'gombes" should or should not be called upon to do. One incident will illustrate all this better than I could explain it. When we reached the Narossara River we left the wagon and pushed on afoot. We were to be gone an indefinite time, and we left N'gombe Brown and his outfit very well fixed.
He lent us his own boy as guide down through the cañons of the Narossara to the Lower Benches, where we hoped to find kudu; he offered store-room to such of our supplies as we intended holding in reserve; he sent us sheep and eggs as a welcome variety to our game diet; and in addition he gave us Masai implements and ornaments we could not possibly have acquired in any other way.
For some distance we followed the Narossara; then, when it began to drop into its tremendous gorge, we continued along the hillsides above it until, by means of various "hogs' backs" and tributary cañons, we were able to regain its level far below. The going was rough and stony, and hard on the porters, but the scenery was very wild and fine.
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