"Oh! ... I ... say! ... I thought those were great tree trunks till they moved, but ... they're..."
"They're giraffes, by Jove! I wonder whether I ought to bring one down? Better not ... might delay us ... and I don't know how the natives 'ud take it...."
A herd of six or seven stately giraffes suspended their browsing on the upper branches of an acacia tree, and gazed at them with their liquid eyes, flicking their satiny bodies with tails that terminated in large black tassels.
"O-oh!'" came from Lucy, as she reined in her donkey. "Look at those things over there! Like houses or great rocks, but they're moving too!"
She pointed with her riding whip to some grey bulks in the middle distance which, as they swished through the herbage, showed here and there a gleam of polished tusks.
"Shoot! Master, shoot!" exclaimed the Wanyamwezi.... "Elephants, Master!" But Roger called for silence and held his hand. Supposing the elephants charged down on Lucy? And then he did not know how the sounds of guns would be received in this new country, what the unknown natives might think, and lastly, perhaps there was beginning to dawn on him an appreciation of what this spectacle meant: a piece of absolutely unspoiled Africa, not yet ravaged by the white man or the native hunter, armed with the white man's weapons. His caravan had plenty of dried meat. They should not break the charm of the Happy Valley—the phrase came suddenly into his mind, some dim remembrance of Dr. Samuel Johnson's ponderous romance.
As they advanced northwards the scenes grew more idyllic. Herds of gnus, hartebeests, elands, and zebras, intermingled with reed buck and impala, alternately stared in immobility, then dashed off in clouds of yellow dust, and once more stood at gaze. Gazelles with glossy black, annulated horns and bodies brilliant in colour—golden-red, black-banded, and snowy-white below—cropped the turf a few yards from the faintly marked track which the caravan was following; and though the bucks lifted their heads to observe this advancing file of human beings they scarcely moved away more than a few yards.
The Valley was not entirely given up to wild life, though it seemed likely that it was only used by man as a pasture ground, and that he preferred the higher country, the hillocks on either side of the plain, for his habitations, out of the way of floods and swamps. But large herds of cattle browsed among antelopes and zebra and were watched over by herdsmen who displayed singularly little curiosity over this first invasion of the Happy Valley by the white man. The Stotts who had preceded Roger and Lucy seemed to have satisfied their curiosity, once and for all. These cattle-tenders were different in physical type to the ordinary Bantu Negro. They were tall; gracefully, slenderly built; and reminded Brentham of Somalis, though their head-hair was close-cropped. Such women as were met showed no sign of fear. They were clad in ample garments of dressed leather. But the men had all the gallant nakedness of the Masai—a skin cape over the shoulders, otherwise only ivory arm-rings and metal-chain necklaces.
The Masai guides occasionally plucked handfuls of grass and exhibited them to the groups of herdsmen as a testimony to the peaceful intentions of the white man's caravan. This voucher was further confirmed by the returning band of Masai who had escorted the Stotts to this Arcadia and were now returning to northern Nguru. They exchanged musical salutations with Roger's guides and told them the "Sitoto" were camped in a village one day's further journey to the north, near the shores of the lake.
"That's all right," said Roger, his mind greatly relieved. "Then let's give our safari a half-holiday and take things easy. We'll pitch our camp on that knoll. How delightful is this short green turf after the miles and miles of burnt grass we've passed through. The spring has begun here a month earlier than in the lower-lying country. I expect the high mountains to the north have attracted the rains, though it's only October. Have you noticed, also, since we entered this valley we've had no mosquitoes? I wonder why? Something p'raps they don't like in the water, or not enough long grass?..."