It is the nature of man to do this
hopefully--Tsavo Station must be just around the _next_ bend. We marched
six hours without pause; then began to save ourselves a little. By all
the gods of logical reasoning we _proved_ Tsavo just beyond a certain
fringe of woods. When we arrived we found that there the river broke
through a range of hills by way of a deep gorge. It was a change from
the everlasting scrub, with its tumbling waters, its awful cliffs, its
luxuriant tropical growths; but it was so much the more difficult to
make our way through. Beyond the gorge we found any amount of hills,
kopjes, buttes, sugar loaves, etc., each isolated from its fellows, each
perfectly competent to serve as the map's single landmark.
We should have camped, but we were very anxious to catch that train; and
we were convinced that now, after all that work, Tsavo could not be far
away. It would be ridiculous and mortifying to find we had camped
almost within sight of our destination!
The heat was very bad and the force of the sun terrific. It seemed to
possess actual physical weight, and to press us down from above. We
filled our canteens many times at the swift-running stream, and emptied
them as often. By two o'clock F. was getting a little wobbly from the
sun. We talked of stopping, when an unexpected thunder shower rolled out
from behind the mountains, and speedily overcast the entire heavens.
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