352 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
ism, and not the smallest tradition lingers to tell of their 
craft or their cruelty, their industry or prowess, or to give 
us the least hint as to the race from which they sprang. 
We had with us an ox wagon, with the regulation span 
of sixteen oxen, the driver being a young Colonial English¬ 
man from South Africa—for the Dutch and English Afri¬ 
canders are the best ox-wagon drivers in the world. On 
the way back to Sergoi he lost his oxen, which were proba¬ 
bly run off by some savages from the mountains; so at 
Sergoi we had to hire another ox wagon, the South African 
who drove it being a Dutchman named Botha. Sergoi 
was as yet the limit of settlement; but it was evident that 
the whole Uasin Gishu country would soon be occupied. 
Already many Boers from South Africa, and a number of 
English Africanders, had come in; and no better pioneers 
exist to-day than these South Africans, both Dutch and 
English. Both are so good that I earnestly hope they 
will become indissolubly welded into one people; and the 
Dutch Boer has the supreme merit of preferring the country 
to the town and of bringing his wife and children—plenty 
of children—^with him to settle on the land. The home¬ 
maker is the only type of settler of permanent value; and 
the cool, healthy, fertile Uasin Gishu region is an ideal 
land for the right kind of pioneer home-maker, whether he 
hopes to make his living by raising stock or by growing 
crops. 
At Sergoi Lake there is a store kept by Mr. Kirke, a 
South African of Scotch blood. With a kind courtesy which 
I cannot too highly appreciate he, with the equally cordial 
help of another settler, Mr. Skally—also a South African, 
but of Irish birth—and of the District Commissioner, Mr. 
