THE COUNTRY AND ITS HISTORY 7 



pointed by Gordon. A series of his letters relating to the 

 political management, the people, and the fauna and flora 

 of the region have been published, and these testify amply 

 to his capacity as an administrator and a naturalist. At 

 various times he made collections of the smaller mammals 

 and birds of his provinces which he sent to the British 

 Museum, and these formed one of the earliest sources of 

 our knowledge of the smaller fauna of the Nile. The big- 

 game animals seem not to have interested him. One 

 proof of this lack of interest was his failure to report the 

 presence of so remarkable a beast as the white rhinoc- 

 eros, which was really abundant near the stations of 

 Wadelai and Kiro, which he occupied for some time while 

 governor. 



The first naturalist to enter the territory which is now 

 British East Africa was the German botanist Hildebrandt, 

 who explored in 1875 the Taita district and the country 

 northeast to the Kitui district. Besides making collec- 

 tions of plants, he collected the smaller mammals, reptiles, 

 insects, and moUusks. Of the big game he collected the 

 horns of the impalla, the common waterbuck, and the black 

 rhinoceros. Soon afterward, in 1878, came Doctor G. A. 

 Fischer, another German naturalist. He first visited the 

 Tana River, which he ascended a considerable distance, 

 discovering during the exploration the small coast race, 

 closely allied to the Grant gazelle, known as Peters gazelle. 

 In the forests bordering the river he collected two new 

 species of apes, a colobus and a mangabey, neither of 

 which have since been secured by naturalists visiting the 

 country. Four years later, in 1882, he reached the Rift 

 Valley and discovered Lake Naivasha. During his eight 



