the white man came.

At Kikuyu Station we came to a halt. Kikuyu Station ordinarily embarks
about two passengers a month, I suppose. Now it was utterly swamped with
business, for on it had descended all our safari of thirty-nine men and
three mules. Thirty of the thirty-nine yelled and shrieked and got in
the wrong place, as usual. C. and the train men and the stationmaster
and our responsible boys heaved and tugged and directed, ordered,
commanded. At length the human element was loaded to its places and
locked in. Then the mules had to be urged up a very narrow gang-lank
into a dangerous-looking car. Quite sensibly they declined to take
chances. We persuaded them. The process was quite simple. Two of the men
holding the ends at a safe distance stretched a light strong cord across
the beasts' hind legs, and sawed it back and forth.

We clanged the doors shut, climbed aboard, and the train at last
steamed on. Now bits of forest came across our way, deep, shaded, with
trailing curtain vines, and wide leaves as big as table tops, and high,
lush, impenetrable undergrowth full of flashing birds, fathomless
shadows, and inquisitive monkeys. Occasionally we emerged to the edge of
a long oval meadow, set in depressions among hills, like our Sierra
meadows. Indeed so like were these openings to those in our own wooded
mountains that we always experienced a distinct shock of surprise as the
familiar woods parted to disclose a dark solemn savage with flashing
spear.

We stopped at various stations, and descended and walked about in the
gathering shadows of the forest. It was getting cool. Many little things
attracted our attention, to remain in our memories as isolated pictures.
Thus I remember one grave savage squatted by the track playing on a sort