On My Way I Had To
Pass The Camp Which The Basoga Caravan Had
Just Left, But The Spectacle Of
About a dozen
newly-made graves which the hyenas had already
torn open caused me to put spurs to my
Horse
and to gallop as fast as possible through the
pestilential spot. When I had almost got back
to railhead I happened to notice a huge serpent
stretched out on the grass, warming himself, his
skin of old gold and bright green sparkling
brilliantly in the sunshine. He appeared to take
little notice of me as I cautiously approached,
and was probably drowsy and sated with a heavy
meal. I shot him through the head as he lay,
and the muscular contortions after death
throughout his long body gave me a very vivid idea
of the tremendous squeezing power possessed by
these reptiles. Skinning him was an easy process,
but unfortunately his beautiful colouring soon
disappeared, the old gold turning to white and
the bright green to lustreless black.
CHAPTER XX
A DAY ON THE ATHI RIVER
In spite of all our difficulties, rapid progress
continued to be made with the line. Each day
railhead crept a mile or so further across the
Plains, and on April 24 we reached the Stony Athi
River, where our great camp was pitched for a
few days while the temporary bridge was being
thrown across the dry bed of the stream. Still
another temporary bridge had to be arranged for
the Athi itself, which was some eight miles further
on, so I had to make one or two expeditions
to this river in order to select a suitable place
for the crossing and to make various other
arrangements. On one of these occasions I was
busy attending to the pitching of my tent after
arriving at the Athi late in the evening, when
on looking round I was very much surprised to
see two European ladies sitting under the shade
of some trees on the river bank. As I knew
that this was anything but a safe place in which
to rest, owing to the number of lions about, I
went up to them to see if I could be of any
assistance, and found that they were American
missionaries journeying to their stations further
inland. They were waiting for their camp
equipment to arrive, but their porters had been
considerably delayed by some very heavy rain, which
of course made the roads bad and the tents about
double their usual weight. The men of the
party were expected every moment with the
porters, but there was as yet no sign of the little
caravan, and as a matter of fact it did not arrive
until long after nightfall. In these circumstances
it was perhaps a great blessing that I happened
to be there; and as the ladies were both very
tired and hungry, I was glad to be able to place
my tent at their disposal and to offer them as
good a dinner as it was possible to provide in
the wilds. It is indeed wonderful what dangers
and hardships these delicately nurtured ladies
will face cheerfully in order to carry out their
self-appointed mission.
When they had left next morning to resume
their journey, I started out and made a search
up and down the river for the proper position
for my temporary bridge. After a thorough
examination of all the possible situations, I
chose the most suitable and pitched my tent close
to it for a night or two while I made the necessary
calculations for carrying out the work. The
crossing on which I had decided had to be
approached by a somewhat sharp curve in the
line, and in laying this out with the theodolite
I experienced considerable difficulty, as for some
reason or other I could not make the last peg
on the curve come anywhere near the tangent
point where the curve should link up with
the straight. I repeated the whole operation
time after time, but always with the same result.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that there
must be some mistake in the table of angles from
which I had been working, so I started to work
them out for myself and soon discovered a serious
misprint. This being rectified in my calculations,
I proceeded to lay out the curve again, when at
last everything came out accurately and to my
satisfaction.
After I had pegged out this temporary
diversion of the line, I thought I richly deserved a few
hours' play, and accordingly determined to try my
luck after lions up-stream towards the source
of the Athi. The river - which runs almost due
north here, before taking a turn eastward to the
Indian Ocean - forms part of the western boundary
of the Athi Plains, and is fringed all along its
course by a belt of thorny hardwood trees. In
some places this fringe is quite narrow, while in
others it is about a quarter of a mile wide, with
grassy glades here and there among the trees.
Every now and again, too, the stream itself
widens out into a broad stretch of water, nearly
always covered over with tall reeds and elephant
grass, while along the banks are frequent patches
of stunted bushes, which struck me as very likely
places for the king of beasts to sleep in after
having drunk at the river. I had noticed that
after having eaten and drunk well, a lion would
throw himself down quite without caution in the
first shady spot he came to; of course nothing
except man ever disturbs him, and even of man
the lions in this part of the country had as yet
no fear, for they had rarely if ever been hunted
previous to my time.
As I felt rather tired after my morning's work,
I decided to use my pony on this expedition,
although as a rule I went on foot. Mahina and
half-a-dozen natives to beat the belt of trees were
to accompany me, and after a hasty lunch off we
started up the left bank of the river.
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