and two askaris to look for him, but at ten in the evening
they returned unsuccessful.
At three in the morning David rushed into my tent
wildly excited, and said that a lion was eating one of the
men. I jumped out of bed, and found that David was
quite right; a lion had seized a man, and dragged him
by the leg ten yards away, but had been frightened by the
other men, who rushed at him with firebrands, and had
driven him off. I had the wounded man brought to the
front of my tent; four of the lion’s teeth had penetrated
his leg, and one had torn away the calf for about six inches
—a wide and very ugly wound. He was also very badly
bitten on the fingers. I washed his wounds, and stitched
up the biggest—not at all an agreeable job, with an
icy wind, in the middle of the night, and with nothing to
see by except a flickering lantern.
Next morning I again sent a man to look for the lost
porter, and he was at last found. The poor fellow had
lost himself, and had to spend the night in a tree under
which a lion had been sitting most of the time. In addition
to the funza, and the innumerable swarms of flies, I
discovered a new pest of Africa. It was a small bird,
with a grey body and a red head, which takes up a
position on the backs of the oxen and donkeys, and
pecks at them until a very bad ulcer is produced. This
is what is usually called the rhinoceros bird, as he always
keeps company with the .rhinoceros, eating the lice with
which his huge friend is covered.
On the 29th March we climbed the escarpment of the
Kikuyu Mountains, and then, getting over a further small
rise, we followed a long grassy valley. Then came a forest,
on the other side of which we at last found traces of
habitation. We had done our eight hours’ walking, and
now crossed a small stream, from which I knew that
Kikuyu was nearly six miles further on; so I decided
to push on. We crossed a series of hills intersected by
magnificent valleys, with rivulets running through them,
478
and at last arrived at Fort Smith, where I was greeted
by Mr. Hall, the agent of the British East Africa Company.
I found there also Major Cunningham, on his way to
Uganda. From him I heard of the deaths of Sir Gerald
Portal and M. Waddington.