or three hours I was conscious of a great fire to the east, but there was little wind and it travelled slowly. Whenever it came to one of the fields of elephant grass the roaring and crackling was quite appalling, and when it finally reached the clump of grass nearest our camp we realized that we would probably have to make a fight. There was no time to backfire and so we tried the next best thing. About twenty-five yards from the tents we started to make a trail stretching for a hundred yards across the path of the fire. This was done by bending the grass down on both sides, leaving a path along which we could move freely. Then the job was to stop the fire at the parting of the grass. A hundred men, each provided with an armful of green branches, scattered along this thin line to beat the fire out as it reached the division. We had a terrific fight. In several places the fire jumped across the trail, but each time enough men concentrated at that point to kill it before it got an overpowering foothold. It was hot, smoky, desperate work. When it was ended, the tents were safe although the men were thoroughly done up.
It was one of these grass fires, although by no means such a persistent one, that threatened Roosevelt's camp the night after our elephant hunt on the Uasin Gishu Plateau.
