358 TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 



earth. They are strikingly handsome and conspicuous 

 creatures. Their bold coloration has been spoken of as 

 "protective"; but it is protective only to town-bred 

 eyes. A non- expert finds any object, of no matter 

 what colour, difficult to make out when hidden among 

 the branches at the top of a tall tree ; but the black and 

 white coloration of this monkey has not the slightest 

 protective value of any kind. On the contrary, it is 

 calculated at once to attract the eye. The 'Ndorobo 

 were a unit in saying that these monkeys were much 

 more easy to see than their less brightly coloured kins- 

 folk who dwell in the same forests ; and this was my 

 own experience. 



When camped in these high forests the woods after 

 nightfall were vocal with the croaking and wailing of 

 tlie tree hyraxes. They are squat, woolly, funny things, 

 and to my great amusement T found that most of the 

 settlers called them " Teddy bears." They are purely 

 arboreal and nocturnal creatiu'cs, living in hollows high 

 up in the big trees, by preference in the cedars. At 

 night they are very noisy, the call consisting of an 

 opening series of batrachian-like croaks, followed by a 

 succession of quavering wails — eerie sounds enough, as 

 they come out of the black stillness of the midnight. 

 They are preyed on now and then by big owls and by 

 leopards, and the white-tailed mongoose is their especial 

 foe, following them everywhere among the tree-tops. 

 This mongoose is both terrestrial and arboreal in habits, 

 and is hated by the Ndorobo because it robs their honey 

 buckets. 



The bongo and the giant hog were the big game of 

 these deep forests, where a tangle of undergrowth filled 

 the spaces between the trunks of the cedar, the olive, 

 and the yew or yellow-wood, while where the bamboos 



