We got a carriage, a low-necked vehicle drawn by two little mules. It was driven by a young black boy, and we got another boy from the hotel to go along for general utility purposes. Into this vehicle we placed our guns, and at seven o'clock in the morning drove out of the town. In fifteen or twenty minutes we had passed through the streets and had reached the pleasant roads of the open plains. Soon we passed the race-track and then bowled merrily along between peaceful barbed-wire fences. Occasional groups of Kikuyus were tramping along the road, bringing in eggs or milk to Nairobi. A farm-house or two lay off to either side, and once or twice we passed boys herding little bunches of ostriches.
At about a quarter to eight we drove up the tree-lined avenue of a farm-house and a pleasant-faced woman responded to our knock. We asked for permission to shoot on the farm and were told that we were quite welcome to shoot as much as we wished.
Five minutes later, less than an hour's drive from Nairobi, we drove past a herd of nearly sixty impalla. They watched us gravely from a distance of two hundred yards. At this point we left the well-traveled road and drove into the short prairie grass that carpeted, the Athi Plains. The carriage bumped pleasantly along, and as we reached a little rise a few hundred feet away, the great stretch of the plains lay spread out before us.
Mount Kenia, eighty or ninety miles north, was clear and bright with its snow-capped peaks sparkling in the early sunlight. Off to its left rose the Aberdare Range, with the dominating peak of Kinangop; to its right rose the lone bald uplift of Donyo Sabuk, and to the east were the blue Lukenia Hills. The house-tops of Nairobi waved miragically in the valley, with a low range of blue hills beyond. Across the plains ran the row of telegraph poles that marked the course of the railway and a traveling column of smoke indicated the busy course of a railway train. This was the setting within which lay the broad stretches of the Athi Plains, billowing in waves like a grass-covered sea.
A Nest of Ostrich Eggs
A Herd of Ostriches
We Bumped Merrily Along