49 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



caught shrews and mice in their traps; mole rats with vel- 

 vety fur, which burrowed like our pocket gophers; rats 

 that lived in holes like those of our kangaroo rat; and one 

 mouse that was striped like our striped gopher. There were 

 conies among the rocks on the hills; they looked like squat, 

 heavy woodchucks, but their teeth were somewhat like 

 those of a wee rhinoceros, and they had little hoof-like nails 

 instead of claws. There were civets and wild-cats and 

 things like a small mongoose. But the most interesting 

 mammal we saw was a brilliantly colored yellow and blue, 

 or yellow and slate, bat, which we put up one day while 

 beating through a ravine. It had been hanging from a 

 mimosa twig, and it flew well in the strong sunlight, look- 

 ing like some huge, parti-colored butterfly. 



It was a settled country, this in which we did our 

 first hunting, and for this reason all the more interesting. 

 The growth and development of East and Middle Africa 

 are phenomena of such absorbing interest, that I was de- 

 lighted at the chance to see the parts where settlement 

 has already begun before plunging into the absolute wilder- 

 ness. There was much to remind one of conditions in 

 Montana and Wyoming thirty years ago; the ranches 

 planted down among the hills and on the plains still teem- 

 ing with game, the spirit of daring adventure everywhere 

 visible, the hope and the heart-breaking disappointment, the 

 successes and the failures. But the problem offered by the 

 natives bore no resemblance to that once offered by the 

 presence of our tribes of horse Indians, few in numbers 

 and incredibly formidable in war. The natives of East 

 Africa are numerous; many of them are agricultural or pas- 

 toral peoples after their own fashion; and even the bravest 

 of them, the warlike Masai, are in no way formidable as 

 our Indians were formidable when they went on the war- 

 path. The ranch country I first visited was in what was 

 once the domain of the Wakamba, and in the greater part 

 of it the tribes still dwell. They are in most ways primitive 

 savages, with an imperfect and feeble social, and therefore 



