14 
THE PLEISTOCENE AGE 
[CH. I 
only happen to a railroad in the Pleistocene Age ! The 
very night we went up there was an interruption in the 
telegraph service, due to giraffes having knocked down 
some of the wires and a pole in crossing the track ; and 
elephants have more than once performed the same feat. 
Two or three times at night giraffes have been run into 
and killed : once a rhinoceros was killed, the engine 
being damaged in the encounter ; and on other occasions 
the rhino has only just left the track in time, once the 
beast being struck and a good deal hurt, the engine 
again being somewhat crippled. But the lions now 
offer, and have always offered, the chief source of 
unpleasant excitement. Throughout East Africa the 
lions continually take to man-eating at the expense of 
the native tribes, and white hunters are frequently being 
killed or crippled by them. At the lonely stations on 
the railroad the two or three subordinate officials often 
live in terror of some fearsome brute that has taken to 
haunting the vicinity; and every few months, at some 
one of these stations, a man is killed, or badly hurt by, 
or narrowly escapes from, a prowling lion. 
The stations at which the train stopped were neat 
and attractive ; and, besides the Indian officials, there 
were usually natives from the neighbourhood. Some 
of these might be dressed in the fez and shirt and 
trousers which indicate a coming under the white man’s 
influence, or which, rather curiously, may also indicate 
Mohammedanism. But most of the natives are still 
wild pagans, and many of them are unchanged in the 
slightest particular from what their forefathers were 
during the countless ages when they alone were the 
heirs of the land—a land which they were utterly power¬ 
less in any way to improve. Some of the savages we 
saw wore red blankets, and in deference to white pre- 
