CHAPTER VII 
BEYOND BARINGO 
(l) AFTER ORYX AND ELAND 
Now that Baringo is becoming a favourite resort of 
big-game hunters, it is interesting to recall that but a 
score of years ago the region was unknown. The first 
white explorer to reach its shores was Joseph Thomson, 
who, writing in 1885, thus described it: “ The mys¬ 
terious lake of Baringo, though long heard of, has been 
a delightful bone of contention between geographers at 
home, who have drawn it in various phases with the 
large and liberal hand characteristic of those who are 
guided by their inner consciousness and a theoretic eye. 
Sometimes it was comparable to the Nyanza in size ; at 
other times it had no existence. Then it knocked 
around the map a bit, being now tacked on to Victoria 
Nyanza, anon separated therefrom, or only connected 
by a thin watery line. After all this shuttlecock work, 
Lake Baringo proves to be an isolated basin, sunnily 
smiling up at its great parents, the shaggy, overhanging 
ranges of Kamasea and Laikipia. In extreme length the 
lake is eighteen miles, and in breadth ten miles.” 1 
Baringo has now acquired not only a fixed position 
in geography, but even a niche in history. A British 
station was first established on the Ribo Hills to the 
north of the lake ; and this led to bloody fighting. Two- 
thirds of the native garrison, having been treacherously 
decoyed away, were surrounded and speared to a man 
by overwhelming swarms of the Jabtulail and Turkana 
1 Through Masailand , p. 533. 
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