CHAP. VIII LAKE BARINGO 135 



guaranteed a performance, and was very angry at the failure of 

 his pet geyser. As we turned to go, he made one last effort, 

 apostrophising the geyser, and in the name of all the gods of a 

 Yankee stable-boy adjured it to come forth. I felt at the time 

 that his language was a thing that could never be forgotten 

 and ought never to be quoted. When, however, Wadi Hamis 

 finished his protest I did quote a little of it. 1 was ill with 

 fever at the time, and that is my only excuse for the outburst 

 and the confusion of the names of some Eastern deities with 

 those of the gods of that western cowboy. But when at dawn 

 next morning, in answer to my inquiry if the porters were 

 ready, Ramathan's soft voice replied, " Dio, Bwani : yote tiari " 

 (Yes, Master, we are all ready), I felt thankful that that language 

 had not been as wasted upon my porters, as it had been upon 

 the demon who disturbs that boiling Wyoming spring. 



It is unnecessary to follow in detail the excursion to the 

 west, and I am glad to hasten through with the rest of the 

 dreary, anxious period of my stay at Njemps. As I was foiled 

 in my endeavour to return to the lake, that I might collect 

 representatives of its fish-fauna, and to visit its islands, and as 

 I only again saw it in the distance, a few notes on the geography 

 of Baringo may be here inserted. 



Lake Baringo ^ is the best known of the members of the 

 lake-chain which I was able to visit. Its existence was first 

 made known to Europeans by the reports of native traders. 

 The old estimates of its size were greatly exaggerated, prob- 

 ably as it was confused with Basso Narok. It became at once 

 a bone of contention among geographers. Thus Livingstone, 

 in accordance with his axiom that all fresh - water lakes 

 must have an outlet, which led him into his most serious 

 geographical blunders, connected it with the Nyanza. Burton 

 welcomed Baringo as another argument in favour of the dis- 

 memberment of Speke's Nyanza into a lacustrine heptarchy. 

 Others, of course, claimed it as the source of the Nile. The 

 first European to reach the lake was Joseph Thomson in 1883, 

 and he showed that its size had been greatly exaggerated, and 

 that it had no connection with cither the Nyanza or the Nile. 

 The maps of the lake were, however, erroneous in many respects, 

 and the circumambulation of it enabled me to correct these, 



^ See inset map, on Map II. 



