20 THE PLEISTOCENE AGE [ch. i 
or other non-negro blood; derived from the Hamitic, 
or bastard Semitic, or at least non-negro, tribes which, 
pushing slowly and fitfully southward and south- 
westward among the negro peoples, have created an 
intricate tangle of ethnic and linguistic types from the 
middle Nile to far south of the Equator. Hamisi always 
wore a long feather in one of his sandals, the only 
ornament he affected. The other sais was a silent, 
gentle-mannered black heathen; his name was Simba, 
a lion, and, as I shall later show, he was not unworthy 
of it. The two horses for which these men cared were 
stout, quiet little beasts; one, a sorrel, I named Tran¬ 
quillity, and the other, a brown, had so much the coblike 
build of a zebra that we christened him Zebra-shape. 
One of Kermit’s two horses, by the way, was more 
romantically named after Huandaw, the sharp-eared 
steed of the “ Mabinogion. ” Cuninghame, lean, sinewy, 
bearded, exactly the type of hunter and safari manager 
that one would wish for such an expedition as ours, had 
ridden up with us on the train, and at the station we 
met Tarlton, and also two settlers of the neighbourhood, 
Sir Alfred Pease and Mr. Clifford Hill. Hill was an 
Africander. He and his cousin, Harold Hill, after 
serving through the South African War, had come to 
the new country of British East Africa to settle, and 
they represented the ideal type of settler for taking the 
lead in the spread of empire. They were descended 
from the English colonists who came to South Africa 
in 1820; they had never been in England, neither had 
Tarlton. It was exceedingly interesting to meet these 
Australians and Africanders, who typified in their lives 
and deeds the greatness of the British Empire, and yet 
had never seen England. 
As for Sir Alfred, Kermit and I were to be his guests 
