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 past alone. Not 

 three years ago, a scoundrelly Goanesse trader conducted 

 against the Turkana, a tribe, not yet placed under English 

 rule, a private war of his own. It began with a 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 



