These Nandi are among the bravest of the African natives. They are much like the Masai, delighting in warfare, and ready to fight at the least provocation. They are more civilized than the Kikuyus, and do considerable work in iron and leather. They have cattle, sheep, and goats, while a few do some farming. Like the Masai, they bleed their cattle and drink the blood hot, sometimes mixing it with their porridge. After bleeding, they close the wounds so that the cattle grow well again. They are good hunters and have large dogs with which they run down the game, so that it can be killed with spears. They also trap game by digging wedge-shaped pits and covering them over with grass. They have donkeys to carry the iron ore from the mines to their furnaces, where they turn it into pig metal. I understand that the Nandi live about the same as the other natives about here. They have circular huts of boards roofed with thatch. Each hut has a fireplace in the centre on each side of which is a little bed consisting of a platform of mud built along the wall of the hut. The people sleep on the mud, using round blocks of wood for pillows. The children sleep with their parents until they are six years of age, when they are shoved off into a smaller hut outside built especially for them. The Nandi believe in witches and medicine men, and have a sky god to whom they pray every morning and to whom they sacrifice when times are hard. Nearly all of these Africans believe in witch doctors. The Wakamba, whose country I passed through on my way to Nairobi, not infrequently kill the women of their tribe when they are charged with witchcraft, and there is a record of something like forty having been murdered this way within the last few years. I saw these Wakamba on the Athi plains and in and about Nairobi. They are tall and fine looking, with woolly hair, rather thick lips, and almost straight noses. CHAPTER XXXV THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY AND THE MASAI In the heart of the East African highlands, as far south of the Mediterranean Sea as New York is distant from Denver, and as far west of the Indian Ocean as Pittsburgh is west of the Atlantic, I am writing this chapter. Lake Naivasha, which is spread out before me, is in the Great Rift Valley, a mighty trough that runs almost north and south through this part of the continent. This great rift begins, it is now believed, south of the Zambezi and embraces Lake Rudolf on the north. Traces of it are to be found even in Palestine. It is supposed to have been formed by the earth’s folding up after a stupendous volcanic eruption, which left the craters of Kilimanjaro, Kenya, and Elgon touching the clouds at altitudes of from fourteen thousand to nearly twenty thousand feet.