PRIMEVAL MAN 229 



on them in the days before the white man came. 

 On the Guaso Nyero of the north, and in the 

 Sotik, the country was even drier at the time 

 of my visit, and the character of the vegeta- 

 tion showed how Hght the normal rainfall was. 

 The land was open, grassy plain, or was thinly 

 covered with thorn scrub, with here and there 

 acacia groves and narrow belts of thicker timber 

 growth along the watercourses, and in the Sotik 

 gnarled gray olives. Yet the game swarmed. 

 We watched the teeming masses come down 

 to drink at the shrunken rivers or at the dwin- 

 dling ponds beside which our tents were pitched. 

 As the line of the safari walked forward under 

 the brazen sky, while we white men rode at 

 the head with our rifles, the herds of strange 

 and beautiful wild creatures watched us, with 

 ears pricked forward, or stood heedless in the 

 thin shade of the trees, their tails switching 

 ceaselessly at the biting flies. In wealth of 

 numbers, in rich variety and grandeur of spe- 

 cies, the magniflcent fauna we then saw was not 

 substantially inferior to that which an age be- 

 fore dwelt on the California plains. 



This Pleistocene California fauna included 

 many beasts which persisted in the land until 

 our own day. There were cougars, lynxes, 

 timber-wolves, gray foxes, coyotes, bears, prong- 



