346 
TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 
grey in the distance, topis with beautifully coloured 
coats, and even waterbuck. We shot what hartebeests, 
topis, and oribis were needed for food. All over the 
uplands we came on the remains of a race of which even 
the memory has long since vanished. These remains 
consist of large, nearly circular walls of stone, which 
are sometimes roughly squared. A few of these circular 
enclosures contain more than one chamber. Many of 
them, at least, are not cattle kraals, being too small, 
and built round hollows; the walls are so low that by 
themselves they could not serve for shelter or defence, 
and must probably have been used as supports for roofs 
of timber or skins. They were certainly built by people 
who were in some respects more advanced than the 
savage tribes who now dwell in the land ; but the grass 
grows thick on the earth mounds into which the ancient 
stone walls are slowly crumbling, and not a trace of the 
builders remains. Barbarians they doubtless were ; but 
they have been engulfed in the black oblivion of a lower 
barbarism, 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-waggon, with the regulation 
span of sixteen oxen, the driver being a young Colonial 
Englishman from South Africa, for the Dutch and 
English Africanders are the best ox-waggon drivers in 
the world. On the way back to Sergoi he lost his oxen, 
which were probably driven off by some savages from the 
mountains ; so at Sergoi we had to hire another ox- 
waggon, the South African who drove it being a Dutch¬ 
man 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 
