250 



THROUGH TURKANA AND SUK 



my efforts at trading or of liis own. He, too, liad been worn out 

 with shauris, the main object of which was to get him to supply 

 rain or war medicine, or medicines to make the cattle fertile. A 

 dance given by some Turkana maidens had been remarkable 

 for the obscenity of the attitudes and gestures indulged in, and 

 yet, strange to say, he had had the greatest difficulty in buying 

 one of the richly decorated aprons worn by the maidens, not 

 apparently because they were indispensable to their owners, 

 many of them having two on, but because the girls were too 

 modest to part with them. 



As it was no use stopping here any longer we resumed our 

 march the next morning. Lemagori and a few natives of Kga- 

 matak, who had brought us some goats, sheep, and donkeys, 

 now acted as guides instead of our Nyiro friend, whose services 

 were no longer needed. At first our route led us along the 

 gradually narrowing bed of the stream, by which we spent a 

 whole week, and then between the spurs and ridges of the 

 Doenye Erok. We passed three well-filled water-holes and here 

 and there flat stretches overgrown with really good grass, but 

 the mountain district seemed to be quite uninhabited, and, 

 what surprised us still more, there were no wild animals and 

 very few birds in the quiet secluded valleys. 



The mountain range appeared to us to be of volcanic origin, 

 though none of the peaks, which varied in height from some 

 600 to 1,200 feet, assumed the characteristic conical form. 

 Ashes, too, strewed the, ground here and there, but we saw no 

 crater, and in some of the deep gullies occurred crystalline 

 rock. 



After a rather long midday rest we pushed on again, and 

 about an hour before sunset found ourselves already on the 

 eastern side of the Doenye Erok, without having come across 

 any inhabitants. We camped on the outskirts of a flat sandy 

 tract of country, with numerous acacia woods, reminding us in 



