TO THE UASIN GISHU 
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traordinary climbers. They were continually climbing 
trees to get at the hyrax, and once when a big black and 
white Colobus monkey which I had shot lodged in the top of 
a giant cedar one of them ascended and brought it down 
with matter-of-course indifference. He cut down a sap¬ 
ling, twenty-five feet long, with the stub of a stout branch 
left on as a hook, and for a rope used a section of vine which 
he broke and twisted into flexibility. Then, festooned with 
all his belongings, he made the ascent. There was a tall 
olive, sixty or eighty feet high, close to the cedar, and up 
this he went. From its topmost branches, where only a 
monkey or a ’Ndorobo could have felt at home, he reached 
his sapling over to the lowest limb of the giant cedar, and 
hooked it on; and then crawled across on this dizzy bridge. 
Up he went, got the monkey, recrossed the bridge, and 
climbed down again, quite unconcerned. 
The big black and white monkeys ate nothing but 
leaves, and usually trusted for safety to ascending into 
the very tops of the tallest cedars. Occasionally they would 
come in a flying leap down to the ground, or to a neigh¬ 
boring tree; when on the ground they merely dashed 
toward another tree, being less agile than the ordinary 
monkeys, whether in the tree tops or on solid earth. They 
are strikingly handsome and conspicuous creatures. Their 
bold coloration has been spoken of as ^'protective’’; but it 
is protective only to town-bred eyes. A nonexpert finds 
any object, of no matter what color, difficult to make out 
when hidden among the branches at the top of a tall tree; 
but the black and white coloration of this monkey has not 
the slightest protective value of any kind. On the con¬ 
trary, it is calculated at once to attract the eye. The 
