LIFE-HISTORIES OF AFRICAN 

 GAME ANIMALS 



CHAPTER I 

 THE COUNTRY AND ITS HISTORY 



The establishment of British protection over East 

 Africa and Uganda is of very recent birth, dating back 

 scarcely over a score of years. The history of the inland 

 exploration of the country is very little older. Only within 

 the last half century have we learned the more important 

 details of the topography of the interior, the position of the 

 great equatorial lakes and their connection with the Nile 

 watershed. It is indeed difficult to realize that a coast which 

 has been known to Europe since the fifteenth century could 

 hide from civilization for three centuries and a half all 

 knowledge of its hinterland. Ptolemy's map, in the mid- 

 dle of the second century, actually gives a better idea of 

 this hinterland than that given by the European maps of 

 the middle of the nineteenth century. 



The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama was the 

 first European to visit the coast. In 1493, during his cir- 

 cumnavigation of Africa, he touched at Mombasa and 

 Malindi, and later carried to Europe the first knowledge 

 concerning the East Coast. Mombasa and the neighbor- 



