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.
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