of mandoline-shaped instrument. It had two strings, and he twanged these
alternately, without the slightest effort to change their pitch by
stopping with his fingers. He bent his head sidewise, and listened with
the meticulous attention of a connoisseur. We stopped at that place for
fully ten minutes, but not for a second did he leave off twanging his
two strings, nor did he even momentarily relax his attention.

It was now near sundown. We had been climbing steadily. The train
shrieked twice, and unexpectedly slid out to the edge of the Likipia
Escarpment. We looked down once more into the great Rift Valley.

The Rift Valley is as though a strip of Africa--extending half the
length of the continent--had in time past sunk bodily some thousands of
feet, leaving a more or less sheer escarpment on either side, and
preserving intact its own variegated landscape in the bottom. We were on
the Likipia Escarpment. We looked across to the Mau Escarpment, where
the country over which our train had been travelling continued after its
interruption by the valley. And below us were mountains, streams,
plains. The westering sun threw strong slants of light down and across.

The engine shut off its power, and we slid silently down the rather
complicated grades and curves of the descent. A noble forest threw its
shadows over us. Through the chance openings we caught glimpses of the
pale country far below. Across high trestle bridges we rattled, and
craned over to see the rushing white water of the mountain torrents a
hundred feet down. The shriek of our engine echoed and re-echoed
weirdly from the serried trunks of trees and from the great cliffs that
seemed to lift themselves as we descended.

We debarked at Kijabe[17] well after dark. It is situated on a ledge in