42 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



We have now reached the high veldt or prairie zone, 

 where the great herds of antelope and other hoofed game 

 are found most abundantly. Open grassy plains are char- 

 acteristic of this elevated region, but nowhere are the grass 

 areas of great extent. The highland veldt is generally of 

 park-like appearance, interspersed by small grass plains 

 which seldom exceed a score of miles in breadth. It is a 

 distinctly rolling country and in places rough and much 

 broken by cliffs and rocky ravines. The predominating 

 soil is the red clay of the nyika, with the exception of the 

 plains area, which is covered by a black cotton soil support- 

 ing a heavy growth of grass. The older hills and moun- 

 tains are of gneiss, but much of the country is more re- 

 cent and covered by lava rocks. These predominate in 

 the Rift Valley, especially where much of the country is 

 traversed by trachytic cliffs and broken by recent lava 

 flows. 



The high veldt zone covers the greater part of the 

 country between the altitudes of three thousand two hun- 

 dred and nine thousand feet. In its upper levels it extends 

 into and well above much of the forest as peninsular or in- 

 sular areas. Extensive areas of grassy veldt occur on the 

 summit of the Mau plateau at eight thousand and nine 

 thousand feet confined by the wall-like edges of the dense 

 highland forests. On the northern slopes of Mount Kenia 

 the veldt region breaks the forests' girdle of the mountain 

 and extends as a wide peninsula upward to the alpine moor- 

 land where it attains an altitude of ten thousand feet. The 

 highland veldt zone is much less in area than the nyika. 

 It covers the head-waters of the coast streams, the greater 

 part of the Nyanza drainage, and the Uganda region west- 



