2 THE EASTERN PROVINCE 



commit considerable devastations among the game of the province, they 

 are a picturesque feature when encountered, and a striking illustration, 

 handed down through the ages, of the life of primitive man not long after 

 he had attained the status of humanity and had acquired a knowledge of 

 the simplest weapons. 



The Eastern Province contains the celebrated Rift A'alley, and the harsh, 

 almost desert regions north of Lake Earingo ; the splendid stretch of 

 mountains and plateaux known from north to south in its different portions 

 as Chibcharahan, Elgeyo, Kamasia, Nandi, Mau, Lumbwa, Sotik — the future 

 white man's colony (a country of rolling grass-lands, dense forests of conifers, 

 and bamboo-covered mountains) ; and a small portion of the north-eastern 

 coast of the Victoria Nyanza, where the plateaux variously named break ofif 

 into shelves and hollows and ridges, until they come down in a tumbling 

 mass of mountains interspersed with marshes and the deltas of rivers into 

 the stagnant gulf of Kavirondo Bay or the bright blue waters of the main 

 lake. 8outh of Lake Naivasha the territory of the Eastern Province 

 stretches in a narrowing angle towards German East Africa, and the country 

 in this direction becomes increasingly arid and lacking in rainfall, though 

 it does not attain the almost desert character reached in the direction 

 of Lake Rudolf. The plateau of the Mau also diminishes in altitude 

 towards the German frontier, and the forests of conifers give way to dense 

 woods of a more tropical character, or to spacious prairies used by the Masai 

 as grazing grounds. 



The Rift Valley and the Nandi Plateau * are the two main geographical 

 features of the Eastern Province. The Rift Valley is a remarkable depression 

 or narrow plain (dotted here and there with broken hills, active and extinct 

 volcanoes), which would seem to stretch in a more or less defined condition 

 from the vicinity of Lakes Rukwa and Nyasa on the south-west, north- 

 eastwards to the Gulf of Tajurra and the Gulf of Aden. Looking at a 

 relief map of Africa one is almost tempted to connect this narrow plain 

 (which winds between the mighty cliffs of tilted plateaux) with the Rift 

 Valley of Lake Nyasa, the Shire, and the Lower Zambezi ; and to hazard 

 the theory that it is the vestige of an ancient strait or arm of the sea 

 that cut ofif at one time another and huger Madagascar. But I am not 

 aware that this theory has any geological facts in its favour. 



The Rift Valley from Lake Rukwa t on the south to the Gulf of Aden 



* To avoid an inconvenient string of names being ([uoted every time this region 

 is referred to, it is better to apply the word " Nandi " to the whole of the lofty region 

 between the Eift Valley on the east, the German frontier on the sonth, Mount 

 ChibcharahAn on the north, and the Victoria Nyanza coast-lands on the west. 



t It is perhaps scarcely necessary to remind the reader that Lake Rukwa is a 

 large salt or brackish sheet of water near the south-east corner of Lake Tanganyika. 



