346 TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 



grey in the distance, topis with beautifully coloured 

 coats, and even waterbuck. We shot what hartebeests, 

 topis, and oribis were needed for food. All over the 

 uplands we came on the remains of a race of which even 

 the memory has long since vanished. These remains 

 consist of large, nearly circular walls of stone, which 

 are sometimes roughly squared. A few of these circular 

 enclosures contain more than one chamber. Many of 

 them, at least, are not cattle kraals, being too small, 

 and built round hollows ; the walls are so low that by 

 themselves they could not serve for shelter or defence, 

 and must probably have been used as supports for roofs 

 of timber or skins. They were certainly built by people 

 who were in some respects more advanced than the 

 savage tribes who now dwell in the land i but the grass 

 grows thick on the earth mounds into which the ancient 

 stone walls are slowly crumbling, and not a trace of the 

 builders remains. Barbarians they doubtless were ; but 

 they have been engulfed in the black oblivion of a lower 

 barbarism, and not the smallest tradition lingers to tell 

 of their craft or their cruelty, their industry or prowess, 

 or to ffive us the least hint as to the race from which 

 they sprang. 



We had with us an ox-waggon, with the regulation 

 span of sixteen oxen, the driver being a young Colonial 

 Englishman from South Africa, for the Dutch and 

 English Africanders are the best ox-waggon drivers in 

 the world. On the way back to Sergoi he lost his oxen, 

 which were probably driven off by some savages from the 

 mountains ; so at Sergoi we had to hire another ox- 

 waggon, the South African who drove it being a Dutch- 

 man named Botha. Sergoi was as yet the limit of 

 settlement, but it was evident that the whole Uasin 

 Gishu country would soon be occupied. Already many 



