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 the escarpment, is perhaps a quarter-mile wide, and includes nothing more elaborate than the station, a row of Indian dukkas, and two houses of South Africans set back towards the rise in the cliffs.  A mile or so away, and on a little higher level, stand the extensive buildings of an American mission.  It is, I believe, educational as well as sectarian, is situated in one of the most healthful climates of East Africa, and is prosperous.

At the moment we saw none of these things.  We were too busy getting men, mules, and equipment out of the train.  Our lanterns flared in the great wind that swept down the defile; and across the track little fires flared too.  Shortly we made the acquaintance of the South Africander who furnished us our ox teams and wagon; and of a lank, drawling youth who was to be our “rider.”  The latter was very anxious to get started, so we piled all our stores and equipment but those immediately necessary for the night aboard the great wagon.  Then we returned to the dak-bungalow for a very belated supper.  While eating this we discussed our plans.

These were in essence very simple.  Somewhere south of the Great Thirst of the Sotik a river called the Narossara.  Back of the river were high mountains, and down the river were benches dropping off by thousands of feet to the barren country of Lake Magahdi.  Over some of this country ranged the Greater Kudu, easily the prize buck of East Africa.  We intended to try for a Greater Kudu.

People laughed at us.  The beast is extremely rare; it ranges over a wide area; it inhabits the thickest sort of cover in a sheer mountainous country; its senses are wonderfully acute; and it is very wary.  A man might, once in a blue moon, get one by happening upon it accidentally, but deliberately to go after it was sheer lunacy.  So we were told.  As a matter of fact, we thought so ourselves, but Greater Kudu was as good an excuse as another.