358 
TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 
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 non-expert finds any object, of no matter 
what colour, 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 contrary, it is 
calculated at once to attract the eye. The ’Ndorobo 
were a unit in saying that these monkeys were much 
more easy to see than their less brightly coloured kins¬ 
folk who dwell in the same forests ; and this was my 
own experience. 
When camped in these high forests the woods after 
nightfall were vocal with the croaking and wailing of 
the tree hyraxes. They are squat, woolly, funny things, 
and to my great amusement I found that most of the 
settlers called them “ Teddy bears.” They are purely 
arboreal and nocturnal creatures, living in hollows high 
up in the big trees, by preference in the cedars. At 
night they are very noisy, the call consisting of an 
opening series of batrachian-like croaks, followed by a 
succession of quavering wails—eerie sounds enough, as 
they come out of the black stillness of the midnight. 
They are preyed on now and then by big owls and by 
leopards, and the white-tailed mongoose is their especial 
foe, following them everywhere among the tree-tops. 
This mongoose is both terrestrial and arboreal in habits, 
and is hated by the ’Ndorobo because it robs their honey 
buckets. 
The bongo and the giant hog were the big game of 
these deep forests, where a tangle of undergrowth filled 
the spaces between the trunks of the cedar, the olive, 
and the yew or yellow-wood, while where the bamboos 
