CAIRO TO KISUMU “Rift Valley” farms or “Rift Valley” hotels. It is still an objective of scientific explorations and the subject of scientific discussions.

This mighty valley narrows and widens, it rises and falls, and it has many big lakes. Broadly speaking, all the great lakes of East Africa are in it or in its spurs. North of here are Lakes Baringo and Rudolf, and still farther north in Abyssinia is Lake Tsana, the source of the Blue Nile. As 1 write I am looking out on Lake Naivasha, a beautiful sheet of blue water over which white cranes are flying. I can see zebras and buck feeding not far from the water, and with my glass can watch the ugly black heads of three hippopotami bobbing up and down like giant fishing corks upon the surface. The swampy shores are lined with masses of reeds. Just back of them the ground rises into rich pastures which are protected from sportsmen by the reservations allotted to the Uganda Rail¬ way and which fairly swarm with big game.

The weather here is delightful. We are so near the Equator that we can almost straddle it, but the altitude is such that blankets are needed at night and it is never excessively hot during the day. Naivasha is a little higher up in the air than the top of Mt. Washington. Indeed, the climate of the whole Rift Valley is said to be suited to white men. This matter is being tested by settlers, for large tracts of land have been taken up in different places not far from the railroad, and there are many Englishmen who are going into stock raising. Near the lake, at Morendat, the government of Kenya Colony has started an experiment farm and there are big ranches in the immediate vicinity. There are no tsetse flies here, for even in the tropics the tsetse is seldom found at an alti-286