Scarcely had we been an hour on the road when down came the rain again. It was impossible to get the sheep or cattle to travel in the rain. All they would do was to turn their backs to it and stand motionless. The rain soon converted the narrow path into a gutter, and when the downpour finally ceased, just before dusk, we were splashing through water over our ankles. We only made a little more than an hour’s ordinary march, and even then some of the sheep did not get into camp until long after dark. The hyænas were very bold, and in spite of the extra men whom we sent to the assistance of the drovers, they got among the sheep in the darkness and killed several.
All night long it rained in torrents, and we awoke in the morning to find over thirty sheep stretched out lifeless on the sodden earth. It was really most disheartening.
We made a start again at ten o’clock and marched in a westerly direction, the country gradually ascending as we progressed westwards.
From our camping-place the following evening we looked down on M’thara and Embe, while the temperature was appreciably lower. On the next day’s march we crossed over country of a rocky and gravelly formation, dotted everywhere with the peculiar whistling trees, which made a very weird and mournful sound in the breeze. It was a small thorny tree from four to eight feet in height, the leafless branches of which are covered with hollow spherical seed-pods, black in colour and the size of a plum. An insect bores a small hole in this shell, which, when the wind blows, causes it to emit a musical note, similar to that produced by an Eolian harp. These whistling trees covered the country for miles, and whistled in all keys at every breath of wind; the sound now increasing in volume, and anon dying away in a mournful wail that sounded almost uncanny.
We saw a solitary lioness on the road, but as soon as she saw us she made off at top speed over the open, before we could get within reasonable range.
We camped at some water-pools which the rain had left in a depression in the rocky surface. The men informed us that they had heard in M’thara that there was no water beyond these pools for ten days’ march; but though there were no rivers marked on my map, we felt convinced that there must be some rivers on the north side.
Joseph Thompson says, “A very few streams, and those of the smallest, rise on the east and north side” (of Kenia).
On the contrary, we had found the east of Kenia exceedingly well watered, though there were certainly no very large rivers, and as events proved, Thompson was equally at fault as regards the north side. But then he never visited north or east Kenia, his knowledge of those parts having been derived from native sources.
However, we felt certain that we should find water, so we pursued the uneven tenor of our way in spite of the maps.
We were still ascending, and the air began to get very cold at night; though the sun’s rays, when it was not raining, beat down during the day with undiminished vigour. Owing to the formation of the country, walking was by no means an unmixed pleasure, sand, gravel, and loose blocks of lava, and fragments of white quartz, making travelling both tiresome and fatiguing.