284 
African Game Trails 
mother hippo swimming, with the young 
one resting half on its back. 
Another day Kermit came on some black 
and white Colobus monkeys. Those we 
had shot east of the Rift Valley had long 
mantles, and more white than black in 
their coloring; west of the Rift Valley they 
had less white and less of the very long hair; 
and here on the Nile the change had gone 
wandered. Moreover, instead of living in 
the tall timber, and never going on the 
ground except for a few yards, as in East 
Africa, here on the Nile they sought to es¬ 
cape danger by flight over the ground, in 
the scrub. Kermit found some in a grove 
of fairly big acacias, but they instantly 
dropped to the earth and galloped off among 
the dry, scattered bushes and small thorn- 
still further in the same direction. On the 
west coast this kind of monkey is said to be 
entirely black. But we were not prepared 
for the complete change in habits. In 
East Africa the Colobus monkeys kept to 
the dense cool mountain forests, dwelt in 
the tops of the big trees, and rarely de¬ 
scended to the ground. Here, on the Nile, 
they lived in exactly such country as that 
affected by the smaller greenish-yellow 
monkeys, which we found along the Guaso 
Nyero for instance; country into which the 
East African Colobus never by any chance 
trees. Kermit also shot a twelve-foot croco¬ 
dile in which he found the remains of a big 
heron. 
One morning we saw from camp a herd 
of elephants in a piece of unburned swamp. 
It was a mile and a half away in a straight 
line, although we had to walk three miles 
to get there. There were between forty and 
fifty of them, a few big cows with calves, the 
rest half-grown and three-quarters-grown 
animals. Over a hundred white herons ac¬ 
companied them. From an ant-hill to lee¬ 
ward we watched them standing by a mud 
