14 THE PLEISTOCENE AGE [ch. i 



only happen to a railroad in the Pleistocene Age ! The 

 very night we went up there was an interruption in the 

 telegraph service, due to giraffes having knocked down 

 some of the wires and a pole in crossing the track ; and 

 elephants have more tlian once performed the same feat. 

 Two or three times at night giraffes have been run into 

 and killed : once a rhinoceros was killed, the engine 

 being damaged in the encounter ; and on other occasions 

 the rhino has only just left the track in time, once the 

 beast being struck and a good deal hurt, the engine 

 again being somewhat crippled. But the lions now 

 offer, and have always offered, the chief source of 

 unpleasant excitement. Throughout East Africa the 

 lions continually take to man-eating at the expense of 

 the native tribes, and white hunters are frequently being 

 killed or crippled by them. At the lonely stations on 

 the railroad the two or three subordinate officials often 

 live in terror of some fearsome brute that has taken to 

 haunting the vicinity ; and every few months, at some 

 one of these stations, a man is killed, or badly hurt by, 

 or narrowly escapes from, a prowling lion. 



The stations at which the train stopped were neat 

 and attractive ; and, besides the Indian officials, there 

 were usually natives from the neighbourhood. Some 

 of these might be dressed in the fez and shirt and 

 trousers which indicate a coming under the white man's 

 influence, or which, rather curiously, may also indicate 

 Mohammedanism. But most of the natives are still 

 wild pagans, and many of them are unchanged in the 

 slightest particular from what their forefathers were 

 during the countless ages when they alone were the 

 heirs of the land — a land which they were utterly power- 

 less in any way to improve. Some of the savages we 

 saw wore red blankets, and in deference to white pre- 



