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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



it makes one feel sadly happy to see 

 such familiar friends as violets, butter- 

 cups, and the like one is familiar with in 

 Europe. 



THE colobus monkey 



The forests which clothe the eastern 

 descent of the Nandi Plateau are ex- 

 tremely dense, full of magnificent tim- 

 ber, with a mingling of conifers, yews, 

 witch-hazels, and some of the timber and 

 vegetation more characteristic of equa- 

 torial regions — a combination, in short, 

 of the tropical forest with the temperate. 

 In these extremely dense woods, which 

 it is impossible for a European to pene- 

 trate without a pioneering party to cut 

 a way, but which are nevertheless the 

 hunting ground of the nomad Andorobo, 

 the two most characteristic creatures are 

 the colobus monkey and a large species 

 of tragelaphus antelope, which resembles 

 in some respects the nyala of South 

 Africa and in others the broad-horned 

 tragelaph of the Gaboon. The presence 

 of this tragelaphus is often made known 

 by its peculiar bark, but, although well 

 known to the Andorobo, it has very 

 seldom been seen by Europeans. 



But the colobus monkey (which is 

 found throughout the Uganda protec- 

 torate and much else of tropical Africa, 

 wherever the forest is dense enough, no 

 matter whether it be cold of climate or 

 always hot) is a far more common sight. 

 The Andorobo who lurk in these forests 

 live mainly on the flesh of this creature, 

 which they shoot from below with 

 poisoned arrows. Having satisfied their 

 hunger on its flesh, they sell the skin, 

 with its long, silky, black and white hair, 

 and its tail, with the immense silky plume 

 at the end, to the Masai or other warlike 

 races, who make it into head-dresses or 

 capes, or else to the European or Swa- 

 hili trader. As the Andorobo are rapidly 

 bringing the extermination of the colo- 

 bus within view, its destruction and the 

 sale of its skin are now prohibited, 

 though it will be a long time before the 

 prohibition is understood and obeyed by 

 these wild men of the woods. 



LITTLE-KNOWN ANIMALS WHICH PRESI- 

 DENT ROOSEVELT MAY ElND 



These magnificent forests are remark- 

 able in that they are vestiges of the an- 

 cient forest belt of Africa that stretched 

 from sea to sea undoubtedly from the 

 Indian to the Atlantic Oceans ; and a re- 

 markable feature at the present day is 

 that many of the forest birds, beasts, 

 spiders, and scorpions of extreme West 

 Africa are more closely allied to the 

 forms of eastern India and Malaysia 

 than they are to those of eastern Africa 

 or western India. In the forests of 

 Mount Kenia and in the Mau, Sotik, 

 and Nandi forests we meet with many 

 creatures that had heretofore been asso- 

 ciated only with West Africa in their 

 distribution. In these East African for- 

 ests you have the magnificent Bongo 

 tragelaph (misnamed "antelope"), which 

 is brilliant orange red with broad white 

 stripes, and also the giant black forest 

 pig, which was only quite recently dis- 

 covered ; and it is probable that if Presi- 

 dent Roosevelt ransacks these East 

 African forests in thorough-going fash- 

 ion he may find some other beasts and 

 birds as yet unknown to science. 



Take, for encouragement, the case of 

 the okapi. That animal was absolutely 

 unknown to us a few years ago. The 

 first hint of it was derived from Stanley. 

 When I was going out to Uganda and 

 East Africa, in 1899, Stanley, who was 

 an old and dear friend of mine, gave me 

 a farewell dinner at his house in London 

 and talked over the things I might dis- 

 cover. He said that there were two crea- 

 tures he should like to know more about 

 among the animals of the great forests. 

 One seemed to be like a donkey ; the na- 

 tives had told him they used to catch a 

 wild donkey in pitfalls. "It is very 

 strange," said Stanley, "that a donkey 

 should exist there. I also believe I saw 

 a pig bigger than any of the swine known 

 to us at the present day. It was once 

 when I was stumbling along through the 

 forest when a large black pig rushed 

 across my path and nearly knocked me 

 over, but when I had recovered my wits. 



