In the meantime a garden--provisionally of about twenty-five acres--had been laid out, a little farther from the precincts of the town than the arable land; for whilst the latter could easily be removed farther away as the town increased, it was necessary to find for the garden as permanent a site as possible--one therefore that lay outside of the range of the growth of the town. As we had among us no less than eighteen skilled gardeners, and as these had as much assistance as they required from the Swahili and Wa-Kikuyu, the twenty-five acres were in a few months planted with the choicest kinds of fruits and berries, vegetables, flowers--in short, with all kinds of useful and ornamental plants which we had brought from our old homes, had collected on our way, or had met with in the neighbourhoods in which we had settled. The garden also was covered with a network of irrigating canals, and enclosed against unwelcome intruders by a high and strong fence. Against accidental inroads of monkeys there was no other protection than the vigilance of our dogs and the guns of the gardeners. A war of annihilation was therefore begun against the monkeys of the whole district, of which there were untold legions in the woods that girdled Eden Vale and in some small groves in the vale itself. While we shot other animals only when we needed their flesh, the monkeys were destroyed wherever they showed themselves in the neighbourhood of Eden Vale; and very soon the cunning creatures began carefully to avoid the inhospitable valley, whilst outside of it they retained their former daring. Several other animals were also excluded from the general law of mercy, and that even more rigorously than the monkeys, which were proscribed only within the boundaries of the valley. These animals were leopards and lions, against which we organised, whenever we had time, serious hunting expeditions. After a few months these animals entirely disappeared from the whole district; and subsequently they almost voluntarily forsook all the districts into which we penetrated with our weapons and with our noisy activity. They have room enough elsewhere, and hold it to be unnecessary to expose their skin to the bullets of white men. On the other hand, we did not molest the hyenas; the harm which they now and then did by the theft of a sheep was more than compensated for by their usefulness as devourers of carrion. They are shy, cowardly beasts, which do not readily attack anything that is alive; but in the character of unwearied sanitary police they scour field and forest for dead animals. In the list of beasts not to be spared stood at first the hippopotamuses, which haunted the Eden lake and the Dana in large herds. We should have had nothing to object to in these uncouth brutes if they had not molested our boats and behaved aggressively towards our bathers. But, after our shells had somewhat lessened their number, and in particular after certain