214 AFRICA SPEAKS 



into our faces, the same thorny trees and bushes, with 

 over all the white-hot sun suspended in a dome of 

 turquoise blue. In this part of the Great Rift Valley, 

 which lies about forty miles north of the equator and 

 directly south of Lake Rudolf on the tliirty-sixth 

 degree of longitude east from Greenwich, is a little- 

 known region called the Baringo area. At the hottest 

 spot in this valley of heat, we located Legumukum. 



Ted and Austin had found a locust officer named 

 Joe Pedley occupying the most favorable location, so 

 we combined the two camps. Pedley knew the district 

 very well and had expected to show me around upon 

 my arrival, but was now down with a touch of fever, 

 so I spent the hot afternoon talking with him. 



He had planned on making headquarters at a place 

 called Sandi, some ten miles distant in the shadow of 

 the Laikipia Escarpment, but had found the river 

 dried up. Thirteen months previously the Sandi 

 River was a clear cool stream flowing out of a crevice 

 in the escarpment and winding its way through the 

 parched valley floor southward. Along its course 

 were many villages of the N jemps Kidogo, a warlike 

 people depending on their herds for sustenance. Dur- 

 ing the night a tremendous earthquake had shaken 

 the country and next morning when the women went 

 down to the stream for water, they found the river had 

 disappeared. The earthquake had changed the course 

 of the stream before it debouched from the cleft in 

 the escarpment, leaving the villages isolated in a semi- 

 desert. This sudden failure of the water supply was 

 a calamity to the N 'jemps; many people and hundreds 

 of head of stock perishing before they could adjust 

 themselves to the new order of tilings. 



