Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/152

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that the thing that makes animals wild is man. In the antarctics and other places where man has not previously come and where the animals know no fear, the explorer can fairly tickle the seals under the chin. Animals in their natural state are not instinctively afraid of man, but they have learned from sad experience that man is bad medicine.

In direct contrast to the camp in Somaliland where we had been forced to quench our thirst with soured goat's milk taken from a passing caravan at the point of a rifle, was our camp on Lake Hannington, the home of the flamingos. The caravan route from Nakuru on the Uganda Railway to Lake Baringo swings in close to the Laikipia Escarpment at the east side of the Rift Valley and just at the north end of Hannington. Therefore, travellers usually get their first view of the lake at this northern point where few flamingos are to be seen except in breeding season and where the water is shallow, bordered by low mud flats crusted with a deposit of salts mingled with feathers, bones, and the droppings of the great colony. If the unattractiveness of the place were not sufficient to discourage a disposition to explore the lake, the sickening stench from the green waters must dishearten any one who has not a definite object in further investigation. Being unfamiliar with the region, we ignored the trail which would have given us this forbidding northern approach. As we neared the escarpment from the south, we found a small stream of crystal-clear water, and although it was too