BARINGO  , a

lake of British East Africa, some 30 M . N. of the equator in the eastern rift-valley . It is one of a chain of lakes which stud the floor of the valley and has an elevation of 3325 ft. above the sea . It is about 16 m. long by 9 broad and has an irregular outline, the northern shore being deeply indented . Its waters are brackish . Fed by several small streams it has no outlet: The largest of the rivers which enter it, the Tigrish and the Nyuki, run north through a flat marshy country which extends south of the lake . This district, inhabited by the negro tribe of Njamusi, was by the first explorers called Njemps . It is a fertile grain-growing region containing two considerable villages; The Njamusi are peaceful agriculturists who show marked friendliness to Europeans . N. of the lake rise the Karosi hills; to the E. the land rises in terraces to the edge of the Laikipia escarpment . A characteristic of the country in the neighbour hood of the lake are the " hills " of the termites (white ants) . They are hollow columns ro to 12 ft. high and from r ft. to 18 in. broad . The greater kudu, almost unknown elsewhere in East Africa, inhabits the flanks of the Laikipia escarpment to the east of the lake and comes to the foot-hills around Baringo to feed .

The existence of Lake Baringo was first reported in

Europe by Ludwig Krapf and J . Rebmann, German missionaries stationed at Mombasa, about 185o; in J . H . Speke's map of the Nile sources (1863) Baringo is confused with Kavirondo Gulf of Victoria Nyanza; it figures in Sir H . M . Stanley's map (1877) as a large sheet of water N.E. of Victoria Nyanza . Joseph Thomson, in his journey through the Masai country in 1883, was the first white man to see the lake and to correct the exaggerated notions as to its size . Native tradition, however, asserts that the lake formerly covered a much larger area .