TO THE UASIN GISHU 



traordinary climbers. They were continually climbing 

 trees to get at the hyrax, and once when a big black and 

 white Colobus monkey which I had shot lodged in the top of 

 a giant cedar one of them ascended and brought it down 

 with matter-of-course indifference. He cut down a sap- 

 ling, twenty-five feet long, with the stub of a stout branch 

 left on as a hook, and for a rope used a section of vine which 

 he broke and twisted into flexibility. Then, festooned with 

 all his belongings, he made the ascent. There was a tall 

 olive, sixty or eighty feet high, close to the cedar, and up 

 this he went. From its topmost branches, where only a 

 monkey or a 'Ndorobo could have felt at home, he reached 

 his sapling over to the lowest limb of the giant cedar, and 

 hooked it on; and then crawled across on this dizzy bridge. 

 Up he went, got the monkey, recrossed the bridge, and 

 climbed down again, quite unconcerned. 



The big black and white monkeys ate nothing but 

 leaves, and usually trusted for safety to ascending into 

 the very tops of the tallest cedars. Occasionally they would 

 come in a flying leap down to the ground, or to a neigh- 

 boring tree; when on the ground they merely dashed 

 toward another tree, being less agile than the ordinary 

 monkeys, whether in the tree tops or on solid 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 color, 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 con- 

 trary, it is calculated at once to attract the eye. The 



