Billy and I saw to the loading of our equipment on the train, and at two o’clock, in solitary state, set forth.  Our only attendants were Mohammed and Memba Sasa, who had been fumigated and inoculated and generally Red-Crossed for the purpose.

The little narrow-gauge train doubled and twisted in its climb up the range overlooking Nairobi and the Athi Plains.  Fields of corn grew so tall as partially to conceal villages of round, grass-thatched huts with conical roofs; we looked down into deep ravines where grew the broad-leaved bananas; the steep hillsides had all been carefully cultivated.  Savages leaning on spears watched us puff heavily by.  Women, richly ornamented with copper wire or beads, toiled along bent under loads carried by means of a band across the top of the head.[16] Naked children rushed out to wave at us.  We were steaming quite comfortably through Africa as it had been for thousands of years before 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 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.