In the meantime I sent out my best trackers in all directions to look for kudu signs, conceiving this the best method of covering the country rapidly.  In this manner I shortly determined that chances were small here, and made up my mind to move down to the edge of the bench where the Narossara makes its plunge.  Before doing so, however, I hunted for and killed a very large eland bull reported by Mavrouki.  This beast was not only one of the largest I ever saw, but was in especially fine coat.  He stood five feet six inches high at the shoulder; was nine feet eight inches long, without the tail; and would weigh twenty-five hundred pounds.  The men were delighted with this acquisition.  I now had fourteen porters, the three gunbearers, the cook, and the two boys.  They surrounded each tiny fire with switches full of roasting meat; they cut off great hunks for a stew; they made quantities of biltong, or jerky.

Next day I left Kongoni and one porter at the old camp, loaded my men with what they could carry, and started out.  We marched a little over two hours; then found ourselves beneath a lone mimosa tree about a quarter-mile from the edge of the bench.  At this point the stream drops into a little canon preparatory to its plunge; and the plateau rises ever so gently in tremendous cliffs.  I immediately dispatched the porters back for another load.  A fine sing-sing lured me across the river.  I did not get the sing-sing, but had a good fight with two lions, as narrated elsewhere.[A]

In this spot we camped a number of days; did a heap of hard climbing and spying; killed another lion out of a band of eight;[25] thoroughly determined that we had come at the wrong time for kudu, and decided on another move.

This time our journey lasted five hours, so that our relaying consumed three days.  We broke back through the ramparts, by means of another pass we had discovered when looking for kudu, to the Third Bench again.  Here we camped in the valley of Lengeetoto.

This valley is one of the most beautiful and secluded in this part of Africa.  It is shaped like an ellipse, five or six miles long by about three miles wide, and is completely surrounded by mountains.  The ramparts of the western side—­those forming the walls of the Fourth Bench—­rise in sheer rock cliffs, forest crowned.  To the east, from which direction we had just come, were high, rounded mountains.  At sunrise they cut clear in an outline of milky slate against the sky.

The floor of this ellipse was surfaced in gentle undulations, like the low swells of a summer sea.  Between each swell a singing, clear-watered brook leapt and dashed or loitered through its jungle.  Into the mountains ran broad upward-flung valleys of green grass; and groves of great forest trees marched down canons and out a short distance into the plains.  Everything was fresh and green and cool.  We needed blankets at night, and each morning the dew was cool and sparkling, and the sky very blue.  Underneath the forest trees of the stream beds and the canon were leafy rooms as small as a closet, or great as cathedral aisles.  And in the short brush dwelt rhinoceros and impalla; in the jungles were buffalo and elephant; on the plains we saw giraffe, hartebeeste, zebra, duiker; and in the bases of the hills we heard at evening and early morning the roaring of lions.