After shaking hands, he bewails the fact that he has a rifle that shoots so baldly. He says its system is absolutely worthless, especially against wild animals. Our fleeting acquaintance is broken off in a few minutes. He is the first newly arrived European that I have met for a long time, but I have not too much sympathy for this class of sportsmen. So my new acquaintance goes off, still blazing away freely. He has been urged on by my information that his camping and watering, place for the day is a long way off, and that the borders of the lake seem to me to be fever-haunted. A queer kind of shepherd, in truth, for these wild herds! I fear he would be very like a wolf, or rather--to be zoologically and geographically precise--a leopard, in sheep’s clothing! Again I was alone; the disturber of my peace had not frightened away the animals. So, as I was regaining strength rapidly, I decided to halt here for a few days. This meant having to provide for oneself in the most primitive way, for I was short of some of the most necessary provisions and supplies. But in such conditions the decision was not difficult to take. I shall not easily forget the days I spent there. The plateau of the volcanic lakes Naiwasha, Elementeita and Nakuro, standing nearly 6,000 feet above the sea, presents to the spectator all the austere, stern, and strange charm peculiar to the Masai uplands. Some ten years have gone by since that expedition of mine, and all is now changed. Up to that time only the natives had lived in these districts. Few Europeans had penetrated into these solitudes; but now a track of iron rails links the Indian Ocean with the Central African Lake basin, and the shrill whistle of the locomotive sounds in the equatorial wilderness. Wherever the influence of the railway extends, the Masai, whom I then learned to know, have disappeared. Reservations have been assigned to them, like the Indians of North America. [Illustration: _C. G. Schillings, phot._ BEARERS MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH HIGH GRASS.] My former companion on my travels, Alfred Kaiser, describes, not without a certain feeling of sadness, how he saw them once more, not long, ago, under these new conditions, already to a great extent changed by European influence--and changed in a way that was not at all to their advantage. Using, instead of the beautiful Masai dialects, some mangled fragments of English, they scornfully refused objects of barter that were eagerly coveted ten years ago, and insisted on coined money. They no longer wore their native ornaments, but were dressed in European second-hand clothes. In a word they were stripped of all the wild and primitive beauty that had once distinguished them. It is a hard fate, when a rude aboriginal people is all of a sudden brought into touch with those of a high degree of civilisation.