322 NA riVES OF EASTERN BRITISH EAST AFRICA part iu 



Section A. — The Stone Age in East Africa 



As we shall see in the following section, there is one tribe living in 

 British East Africa which carries us far back in the history of the 

 human occupation of this region. There are, however, traces of a 

 still older race. It is well known that in Europe the earliest men were 

 unacquainted with the art of preparing metals, and were only provided 

 with weapons and implements made of stone, which occur in vast 

 numbers in our river gravels. Similar tools have also been found in 

 Northern Africa, and have been recorded from the Cape by Sir George 

 Grey, Dale, Sanderson, Gooch, Penning, and other authors. Stone axes 

 have been described from the Gold Coast by Winwoode Reade, 

 Cameron, and Burton ; but in 1892 no record of old stone implements 

 had been recorded from Equatorial or Eastern Tropical Africa. I was 

 therefore interested, during an excursion up one of the side valleys of 

 the Iveti Mountains, to find a chipped flake of obsidian. The flake was 

 rough, but the chipping on its edge was unquestionably the work of 

 man, while the material was absolutely different from any rock in the 

 neighbourhood. I thought, however, that it might have been chipped 

 by a Zanzibari for use as a gun-flint, and dropped on the caravan route 

 which passed a few miles away. I therefore did not trouble any 

 further. A few days later, on the Kapte plains, I found some more ; 



