TO THE UASIN GISHU 



351 



an old friend, William Lord Smith "Tiger" Smith who, 

 with Messrs. Brooks and Allen, were on a trip which was 

 partly a hunting trip and partly a scientific trip undertaken 

 on behalf of the Cambridge Museum. 



From the 'Nzoi we made a couple days' march to Lake 

 Sergoi, which we had passed on our way out; a reed-fringed 

 pond, surrounded by rocky hills which marked about the 

 limit to which the Boer and English settlers who were tak- 

 ing up the country had spread. All along our route we en- 

 countered herds of game; sometimes the herd would be of 

 only one species; at other times we would come across a 

 great mixed herd, the red hartebeest always predominating; 

 while among them might be zebras, showing silvery white 

 or dark gray in the distance, topis with beautifully colored 

 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 stones, 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 sup- 

 ports 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; 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 barbar- 



