AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
CHAPTER I 
A RAILROAD THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 
The great world movement which began with the voy¬ 
ages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, and has gone on 
with ever-increasing rapidity and complexity until our 
own time, has developed along a myriad lines of interest. 
In no way has it been more interesting than in the way in 
which it has resulted in bringing into sudden, violent, and 
intimate contact phases of the world’s life history which 
would be normally separated by untold centuries of slow 
development. Again and again, in the continents new to 
peoples of European stock, we have seen the spectacle of a 
high civilization all at once thrust into and superimposed 
upon a wilderness of savage men and savage beasts. No¬ 
where, and at no time, has the contrast been more strange 
and more striking than in British East Africa during the 
last dozen years. 
The country lies directly under the equator; and the 
hinterland, due west, contains the huge Nyanza lakes, 
vast inland seas which gather the head-waters of the White 
Nile. This hinterland, with its lakes and its marshes, its 
snow-capped mountains, its high, dry plateaus, and its 
forests of deadly luxuriousness, was utterly unknown to 
white men half a century ago. The map of Ptolemy in 
the second century of our era gave a more accurate view 
of the lakes, mountains, and head-waters of the Nile than 
the maps published at the beginning of the second half of 
the nineteenth century, just before Speke, Grant, and 
Baker made their great trips of exploration and adventure. 
Behind these explorers came others; and then adventurous 
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