NZOIA PLATEAU AND ITS TRIBES 211 
numbers destroyed? One of those ill-fated races, to be 
found in all lands, who, like the Irish, “‘went out to battle 
and always fell?” 
Was their last stand made on one of these high hills, still 
crowned by their rude buildings? Or did some withering 
plague, such as still walks in the noon day of Africa, some 
deadly pestilence of long ago, lay its blight on a whole people ? 
Or were they a timorous and unwarlike race, shrinking from 
open fight, and seeking in rude intrenchments a means of 
defence against neighbours stronger and more warlike 
than they? 
Few may ever question, none may ever know. The 
mighty forest and rich, encroaching veldt will soon blot out 
their only memorials, these strange stone circular foundations 
of their homes. ‘They are gone, and but one more is added 
to the innumerable and forgotten tragedies of this sad and 
beautiful land. 
Nor are tragedies here things of the long pastalone. Not 
three years ago, a scoundrelly Goanesse trader conducted 
against the Turkana, a tribe, not yet placed under English 
tule, a private war of hisown. It began witha well organ- 
ized cattle raid. Then, when the unfortunate people tried 
to recover their own, the robbers swept them down with 
rifle fire; then more cattle were driven in, then another 
useless onslaught by the ill-armed Turkana followed. 
After several months of such wholesale buccaneering, the 
trader was actually taken by the authorities into Barengo 
boma, and the Turkana were told to come in and identify 
the cattle if they could. It was hard to get wild men like 
these, who had lately had such bitter cause to distrust the 
white man, to come. But some of them came. ‘The mur- 
dered men naturally could not. Many cattle were identified 
by them, and these the trader gave up. He was then allowed 
to go, keeping the rest. He returned to more settled regions 
with his stolen gains, and actually succeeded in selling a part 
