Guide to the Beasts of East Africa

Astonishingly, though, it actually proved to belong to a group of languages spoken on the Indonesian island of Borneo, on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean thousands of miles to the northeast. Physically, the Malagasy range in appearance from typical Indonesians to typical blacks of East Africa. These paradoxes are due to the Malagasy having arrived between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, as a result of Indonesian traders voyaging around the Indian Ocean coastline to India and eventually to East Africa. In Madagascar they proceeded to build a society based on herding cattle and goats and pigs, farming, and fishing, and linked to the East African coast by Muslim traders. As interesting as Madagascar's people are the wild animals that it has—and those that it lacks. Living in enormous abundance on the nearby African mainland are many species of large and conspicuous beasts that run on the ground and are active by day—the antelopes, ostriches, zebras, baboons, and lions that draw modern tourists to East Africa ...»