AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



CHAPTER I 



A RAILROAD THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 



The great world luov^ement which began with the 

 voyages of Columbus and V^asco da Gama, and which 

 has gone on with ever-increasing rapidity and complexity 

 imtil our own time, has developed along a myriad lines 

 of interest. In no way has it been more interesting 

 than in the way in which it has brought into sudden, 

 violent, and intimate contact phases of the world's life- 

 history which would normally be separated by untold 

 centuries of slow development. Again and again, in 

 the continents new to peoples of European stock, we 

 liave seen the spectacle of a high civilization all at once 

 thrust into and superimposed upon a wilderness of 

 savage men and savage beasts. Nowliere, and at no 

 time, has the contrast been more strange and more 

 striking than in British East Africa during the last 

 dozen years. 



The country lies directly under the Equator ; and the 

 hinterland, due west, contains the huge Nyanza lakes, 

 vast inland seas which gather the head-waters of the 

 \Vhite Nile. This hinterland, with its lakes and its 

 marshes, its snow-capped mountains, its high, dry 



I 



