THE MOUNT ELGON COUNTRY 277 



about in a sea of waving grass for miles and miles, 

 and getting more and more hopelessly lost, we 

 stumbled upon signs of human habitation. The first 

 sign was a great stretch of valley in which a number 

 of smoke columns were ascending. Where there's 

 smoke there's folk, we thought, patting ourselves 

 on the back for cleverness. We knew we were ap- 

 proaching fresh eggs and chickens. 



A little later we came upon another sign of hu- 

 man agitation. Over a rise in a hill we saw a large 

 spear, and in a few minutes we overhauled a native 

 guarding a herd of cattle. He carried a spear and 

 a shield, and over his shoulders he wore a loose 

 dressing sack that hung down nearly to his arm- 

 pits. Civilization had touched him lightly, in fact 

 it had barely waved at him as it brushed by. 



We tried him with several languages Swahili, 

 Kikuyu, the language of flowers, American, Masai, 

 and the sign language, none of which he was con- 

 versant with. Then we tried a relay system of dia- 

 lects which established a vague, syncopated kind 

 of intellectual contact. One of our porters spoke 

 Kavirondo, so he held converse with the far from 

 handsome stranger, translated it into Swahili, and 

 this was retranslated into English for our benefit. 



The stranger was a Ketosh. We didn't know 

 what a Ketosh was, but it sounded more like some- 

 thing in the imperative mood than anything ethno- 

 logical. It developed later in the day, however, that 

 a Ketosh is a member of the tribe of that name, and 

 their habitat is on the southern slopes of Elgon. 



