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.
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.
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