126 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
that the thing that makes animals wild is man. In 
the antarctics and other places where man has not 
previously come and where the animals know no fear, 
the explorer can fairly tickle the seals under the chin. 
Animals in their natural state are not instinctively 
afraid of man, but they have learned from sad ex- 
perience that man is bad medicine. 
In direct contrast to the camp in Somaliland where 
we had been forced to quench our thirst with soured 
goat’s milk taken from a passing caravan at the point 
of a rifle, was our camp on Lake Hannington, the 
home of the flamingos. The caravan route from 
Nakuru on the Uganda Railway to Lake Baringo 
swings in close to the Laikipia Escarpment at the 
east side of the Rift Valley and just at the north end 
of Hannington. Therefore, travellers usually get 
their first view of the lake at this northern point 
where few flamingos are to be seen except in breeding 
season and where the water is shallow, bordered by 
low mud flats crusted with a deposit of salts mingled 
with feathers, bones, and the droppings of the great 
colony. If the unattractiveness of the place were not 
sufficient to discourage a disposition to explore the 
lake, the sickening stench from the green waters must 
dishearten any one who has not a definite object in 
further investigation. Being unfamiliar with the 
region, we ignored the trail which would have given 
us this forbidding northern approach. As we neared 
the escarpment from the south, we found a small 
stream of crystal-clear water, and although it was too 
