500 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



latter as I always do, when I get a chance and it turned 

 over and over, lashing with its tail as it sank. A half-grown 

 hippo came up close by the boat and leaped nearly clear of 

 the water; and in another place I saw a mother hippo 

 swimming, with the young one resting half on its back. 



Another day Kermit came on some black-and-white 

 Colobus monkeys. Those we had shot east of the Rift 

 Valley had long mantles, and more white than black in 

 their coloring; west of the Rift Valley they had less white 

 and less of the very long hair; and here on the Nile the 

 change had gone still further in the same direction. On the 

 west coast this kind of monkey is said to be entirely black. 

 But we were not prepared for the complete change in hab- 

 its. In East Africa the Colobus monkeys kept to the dense 

 cool mountain forests, dwelt in the tops of the big trees, and 

 rarely descended to the ground. Here, on the Nile, they 

 lived in exactly such country as that affected by the smaller 

 greenish-yellow monkeys, which we found along the Guaso 

 Nyero for instance; country into which the East African 

 Colobus never by any chance wandered. Moreover, instead 

 of living in the tall timber, and never going on the ground 

 except for a few yards, as in East Africa, here on the Nile 

 they sought to escape danger by flight over the ground, in 

 the scrub. Kermit found some in a grove of fairly big 

 acacias, but they instantly dropped to the earth and gal- 

 loped off among the dry, scattered bushes and small thorn- 

 trees. Kermit also shot a twelve-foot crocodile in which 

 he found the remains of a big heron. 



One morning we saw from camp a herd of elephants in 

 a piece of unburned swamp. It was a mile and a half 

 away in a straight line, although we had to walk three 

 miles to get there. There were between forty and fifty 

 of them, a few big cows with calves, the rest half-grown 

 and three-quarters-grown animals. Over a hundred white 

 herons accompanied them. From an ant-hill to leeward 

 we watched them standing by a mud hole in the swamp; 

 evidently they now and then got a whiff from our camp, 



