THE WANDERINGS OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER

COUNTRY LIFE

First published in 1923

THE NATIVE ATTACK.

Frontispiece.

THE
WANDERINGS OF AN
ELEPHANT HUNTER

BY
W. D. M. BELL

LONDON
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” LTD.,
20, TAVISTOCK ST., COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2, AND BY
GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8-11, SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND, W.C.2
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
MCMXXIII

Printed in Great Britain.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WANDERINGS OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER

I
HUNTING THE BIG BULL ELEPHANT

The most interesting and exciting form of elephant-hunting is the pursuit of the solitary bull. These fine old patriarchs stand close on twelve feet high at the shoulder and weigh from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand pounds or more, and carry tusks from eighty to one hundred and eighty pounds each. They are of great age, probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty years old. These enormous animals spend their days in the densest part of the bush and their nights in destroying native plantations.

It is curious that an animal of such a size, and requiring such huge quantities of food, should trouble to eat ground nuts—or peanuts, as they are called in this country. Of course, he does not pick them up singly, but plucks up the plant, shakes off the loose earth and eats the roots with the nuts adhering to them. One can imagine the feelings of a native when he discovers that during the night his plantation has been visited by an elephant.

The dense part of the bush where the elephant passes his day is often within half a mile of his nightly depredations, and it is only through generations of experience that these wicked old animals are enabled to carry on their marauding life. Many bear with them the price of their experience in the shape of bullets and iron spear-heads; the natives set traps for them also, the deadliest one being the falling spear. Of all devices for killing elephants known to primitive man this is the most efficient. The head and shank of the spear are made by the native blacksmith, and the whole thing probably weighs about four hundred pounds and requires eight men to haul it into position. To set the trap a spot is chosen in the forest where an elephant-path passes under a suitable tree. A sapling of some twelve feet in length is then cut. One end is made to fit tightly into the socket of the spear-head and to the other end is attached a rope. The spear end of the rope is then placed over a high bough at a point directly over the path, while the other end is taken down to one side of the path, then across it and made fast to a kind of trigger mechanism. It is placed at such a height from the ground as will allow buffalo and antelope to pass under it but not a full-grown elephant. He will have to push it out of his way. This part of the rope is generally made of a bush vine or creeper. If all goes well, an elephant comes along the path, catches the creeper on his forehead or chest, pushes it sufficiently to snap it off, and then down hurtles the huge spear, descending point first with terrific force on neck, shoulder or ribs. I have seen taken from an old bull’s neck a piece of iron three feet long and almost eaten away. The wound had completely healed and it may have been there for years. If, however, the spear strikes the spine, death is instantaneous.

THE FALLING SPEAR: THE DEADLIEST NATIVE ELEPHANT TRAP.

THE MARAUDING BULL.

This spear, weighing about four hundred pounds and provided with a twelve-foot shaft, is hung head downwards from a tree. The rope, of vine or creeper, which holds it up, is stretched across an elephant-path, so that, in passing, the animal must snap it, liberating the spear to drop upon his own head or ribs.

To get within hearing distance of these old elephants is comparatively easy. You simply pick up the enormous tracks in the early morning and follow them into their stronghold. Sometimes, after going quite a short distance through fairly open forest, you begin to find it more and more difficult to force your way along. The tracks are still there, but everything gives way before the elephant and closes in behind him again. Here in the dark cool parts there are no flies, so that the flapping and banging of ears, the usual warning of an elephant’s presence, are lacking. The light begins to fail; air currents are non-existent, or so light they cannot be felt; the silence is profound. Monkeys and parrots are away in the more open parts. You may expect to hear your game at any moment now. You hope to see him, but your luck is in if you do. At the most you will see a high and ghostly stern flitting through the undergrowth, sometimes disconcertingly close in front of you. Literally nothing indicates the presence of such an enormous animal, and if it were not for the swish of the bush as it closes in behind him you would find it hard to believe that he was so close. His feet, softly cushioned with spongy gristle, make no sound. He seems to know that his stern is invulnerable alike to bullets or spears; while his huge ears, acting as sound-collecting discs, catch with their wide expanse the slightest sound of an enemy. He shows no sign of panic; there is no stampede as with younger elephants when they are disturbed; only a quiet, persistent flitting away. You may concentrate on going quietly; you may, and probably do, discard your leg gear in order to make less sound; you redouble your stealth; all in vain. He knows the game and will play hide-and-seek with you all day long and day after day. Not that this silent retreat is his only resource—by no means—he can in an instant become a roaring, headlong devil. The transformation from that silent, rakish, slinking stern to high-thrown head, gleaming tusks and whirling trunk, now advancing directly upon you, is a nerve test of the highest order. The noise is terrific. With his trunk he lashes the bushes. His great sides crash the trees down in every direction, dragging with them in their fall innumerable creepers. The whole forest is in an uproar. Much of this clatter the experienced hunter writes off as bluff, for after a short, sharp rush of this sort he will often come to a dead stop and listen intently. Here, again, his long experience has taught him that his enemy will now be in full retreat, and in most cases he is right. Certainly no native hunter waits to see, and most white men will find they have an almost uncontrollable desire to turn and flee, if only for a short way. With the deadliest of modern rifles it is only a very fleeting chance that one gets at his brain. The fact that the distance at which his head emerges from the masses of foliage is so small, and the time so short until he is right over you, in fact, makes this kind of hunting the most exciting and interesting of any in Africa, or the world, as I think most men who have experienced it will agree. If the shot at the brain is successful the monster falls and the hunter is rewarded with two magnificent tusks. And great will be the rejoicing among the natives at learning of his death, not only for the feast of meat, but also to know that their plantations have been rid of the marauding pest.

II
THE BRAIN SHOT AT ELEPHANT

The hunting of the African elephant is now restricted in so many ways that it is difficult for anyone to gain experience in the shooting of them. In most of the protectorates or dependencies of the European powers a licence to kill two in a year costs from £40 to £80. It therefore behoves the sportsman to make a good job of it when he does come face to face with these splendid animals.

Twenty-five years ago parts of Africa were still open to unrestricted hunting, and it is from a stock of experience—gathered during years devoted to this fascinating pursuit—that I am about to draw, in the hope that it may assist the sportsman to bring about a successful termination to his hunt and perhaps save some unfortunate animal from a lingering death due to wounds.

In hunting elephant, as in other things, what will suit one man may not suit another. Every hunter has different methods and uses different rifles. Some believe in the big bores, holding that the bigger the bore therefore the greater the shock. Others hold that the difference between the shock from a bullet of, say, 250 grs. and that from a bullet of, say, 500 grs. is so slight that, when exercised upon an animal of such bulk as an elephant, it amounts to nothing at all. And there is no end to the arguments and contentions brought forward by either side; therefore it should be borne in mind when reading the following instructions that they are merely the result of one individual’s personal experience and not the hard and fast rules of an exact science.

As regards rifles, I will simply state that I have tried the following: ·416, ·450/·400, ·360, ·350, ·318, ·275 and ·256. At the time I possessed the double ·400 I also had a ·275. Sometimes I used one and sometimes the other, and it began to dawn on me that when an elephant was hit in the right place with the ·275 it died just as quickly as when hit with the ·400, and, vice versa, when the bullet from either rifle was wrongly placed death did not ensue. In pursuance of this train of thought I wired both triggers of the double ·450/·400 together, so that when I pulled the rear one both barrels went off simultaneously. By doing this I obtained the equivalent of 800 grs. of lead propelled by 120 grs. of cordite. The net result was still the same. If wrongly placed, the 800 grs. from the ·400 had no more effect than the 200 grs. from the ·275. For years after that I continued to use the ·275 and the ·256 in all kinds of country and for all kinds of game. Each hunter should use the weapon he has most confidence in.

The deadliest and most humane method of killing the African elephant is the shot in the brain. Its advantages over the body shot are numerous, but among them may be mentioned that it causes instantaneous death, and no movement of the stricken animal communicates panic to others in the vicinity. The mere falling of the body from the upright to a kneeling or lying position does not appear in practice to have any other effect than to make the others mildly curious as to what has happened. On the other hand, if there are several elephants together and the heart shot is employed, the one hit almost invariably rushes off with a groan and squirm for fifty or a hundred yards, taking with him his companions, which do not stop when he stops, but continue their flight for miles. Another great advantage that the brain shot has over the heart shot is that with the former there is no search for the dead animal, whereas with the latter it is sometimes extremely difficult to find it in thick bush even when lying within fifty or sixty yards of the spot from which the shot was fired. Again, the smallest bore rifles with cartridges of a modern military description, such as the ·256, ·275, ·303 or ·318, are quite sufficiently powerful for the brain shot. The advantages of these I need hardly enumerate, such as their cheapness, reliability, handiness, lightness, freedom from recoil, etc. For the brain shot only bullets with an unbroken metal envelope (i.e., solids) should be employed; and those showing good weight, moderate velocity, with a blunt or round-nosed point, are much better than the more modern high velocity sharp-pointed variety. They keep a truer course, and are not so liable to turn over as the latter.

THE DEADLIEST AND MOST HUMANE METHOD OF KILLING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT IS THE SHOT IN THE COMPARATIVELY SMALL BRAIN CONTAINED IN HIS GIGANTIC HEAD.

THE BRAIN SHOT FROM BEHIND.

THE POSITION OF THE BRAIN WHEN THE HEAD IS VIEWED FROM THE FRONT.

LOCATING THE BRAIN WITH THE SIDE OF THE HEAD TO THE SPORTSMAN.

THE ELEPHANT, AFTER THE BRAIN SHOT, DIES QUIETLY AND THE OTHERS DO NOT TAKE ALARM.

The greatest disadvantage the brain shot has is the difficulty of locating the comparatively small brain in the enormous head. The best way is, of course, to kill an elephant by the heart shot and very carefully to dissect the head, thereby finding out the position of the brain in relation to the prominent points or marks on the head, such as the eyes and ear holes. Unfortunately for this scheme, the head is never in the same position when the animal is dead as when alive, as an elephant hardly ever dies kneeling when a body shot has been given him.

The experienced elephant shot can reach the brain from almost any angle, and with the head in almost any position. But the novice will be well advised to try the broadside shot only. Having mastered this and studied the frontal shot, he may then try it. When successful with the above two shots he may be able to reach the zenith of the elephant hunter’s ambition, i.e., to kill instantaneously any of these huge pachyderms with one tiny nickel pencil-like bullet when moving or stationary and from any angle.

From the point of view of danger to the hunter, should a miss occur, an ineffective shot in the head does not appear to have the enraging effect a body shot elsewhere than in the vitals sometimes has. Should the bullet miss the brain, but still pass sufficiently close to it to stun the animal, he will drop to every appearance dead. If no convulsive jerking of the limbs is noticed he is only stunned, and should be given another shot, as otherwise he will soon get up and make off as if nothing had touched him.

III
THE BODY SHOT AT ELEPHANT

Although the brain shot is speedier in result and more humane if bungled than the body shot, yet the latter is not to be despised. Many hunters employ no other. These will generally be found to be adherents to the “Big Bore” school. The heart and lungs of an elephant present, together with the huge arteries immediately adjacent, a large enough target for anyone, provided his or her nerves are sufficiently controlled to allow of the rifle being aimed at the correct spot. If this is not the case, and the whole animal is treated as the target, to be hit anywhere, then the result will be flight or a charge on the part of the elephant. Should the latter occur in thick stuff or high grass—12 ft. or 14 ft.—the novice will have a very unpleasant time indeed. An angry bull elephant is a magnificent sight, but an extremely difficult animal to deal with, even for the practised shot. For one thing, he is generally end on and the head is at a high angle and never still. If the novice comes through the encounter undamaged he will either leave elephants severely alone for the rest of his life or he will be extremely careful where he puts his bullet next time.

THE ANGRY BULL.

A magnificent sight but extremely difficult to deal with.

1.—WHERE THE WINDPIPE ENTERS THE BODY IS THE SPOT TO HIT WHEN THE ANIMAL IS IN THIS POSITION.

2.—ELEPHANT IN THE COUNTRY MOST SUITED TO THE BODY SHOT.

Even here, on an open grassy plain, if the hunter can get within thirty or forty yards, the brain shot is to be preferred.

3.—WITH ONE EYE SHUT.

The shaded portion represents the hands holding the rifle.

4.—WITH BOTH EYES OPEN.

The whole of the head is visible through the hands and rifle.

THE DOTTED LINES SHOW THE POSITION OF THE HEART AND LUNGS.

WITH THE HERD IN THE PAIRING SEASON.

The natural inclination of most men is to fire and fire quickly, straight at the beast, anywhere. This must be resisted at all costs. If you can force yourself to wait until you have counted ten slowly, the animal is yours. The mere act of asserting your mentality gives such ascendency to your powers of judgment and such confidence that you will be surprised to find yourself coolly waiting for a better chance than the one you were quite prepared to take a few seconds before. When you are in this state of mind, try and get to a range of about thirty yards at right angles to the fore and aft line of the animal. Now see if the fore leg is clearly visible for the greater part. If it is and is fairly upright you may use its centre line as your direction. A third of the distance from the brisket to the top of the back is the elevation. If struck there or thereabouts either the top of the heart or the lungs or some of the arteries will be pierced and the animal cannot live, even when the bullet used is as small as a ·256. He may run fifteen or twenty yards, subside into a walk for another forty or fifty yards, stand about for some time and then subside. This is a pierced artery. He may rush away for thirty to sixty yards at a great pace and fall in his stride. This is a heart shot. Or he may rush off spouting bright red blood from his trunk in great quantities. This is a shot in the lungs.

If you have missed the deadly area and are high, you may have touched the spinal column. But it is so massive at this spot in a large elephant that it will rarely be broken, so that even when he comes down he will soon recover and be up and off. Too far forward you may get the point of the shoulder and your bullet may have so weakened the bone that when he starts off it may break. An elephant can neither trot nor gallop, but can only pace, therefore one broken leg anchors him. It is true that he may just stagger along for a few yards by substituting his tusks as a support in place of the broken leg. In a case of this sort you will naturally dispatch him as quickly as possible.

If your bullet has gone too far back and got into the stomach you may be in for a lively time, as nothing seems to anger them more than a shot so placed. If he comes for you meaning business, no instructions would help you, simply because you wouldn’t have time to think of them. Hit him hard quickly and as often as you can, about a line between the eyes, or in the throat when his head is up, and see what happens. Never turn your back to him. While you can see him you know where he is. And besides, you cannot run in thick stuff without falling. Always stand still and shoot whichever animal threatens you most is what I have found to be the best plan.

Should you come upon a good bull in a position such as is shown in Fig. 1, you may kill him with a shot where the windpipe finally enters the chest as indicated by the spear. For some reason or other this is not an easy shot. It may be because the spot is nearly always in deep shadow. Personally I would wait until he lowered his head and gave me a chance at his brain. A hunting companion of mine once shot an elephant in the brain while in a position such as shown in Fig. 1. The bullet had entered through the top of the palate, showing that he must have been almost under the animal’s head when he fired. In Fig. 2 we have elephant in country most suitable for the body shot, that is, open, short grassy plains. The mature bull on the right is the first choice. Observe his massive head, short but heavy tusks. He is not old, but his teeth will weigh well. The second choice is the one on the left which is swinging his ears. Our friend in the middle which is philandering with the heavy-looking cow should be spared. Observe how his teeth taper away to nothing. They would scarcely scale 30 lb. each.

In Fig. 3 I have tried to show what happens when you aim your rifle with one eye closed at an elephant’s brain. Everything below the head is obliterated with this form of backsight. This makes it much more difficult to judge correctly the position of the brain, as the sight cuts out one or both of the “leading marks,” i.e., the eye and the earhole. The shaded portion represents the hands holding the rifle.

Fig. 4 is meant to show what happens when the same sight is being taken at the same elephant but with both eyes open. Owing to the left eye seeing the whole image—as its view of it is not obstructed by the hands—the whole of the elephant’s head appears visible through the hands and rifle. The advantage is obvious. Anyone can do it who will take the trouble to practise.

Finally, I would like to warn anyone who may be going out for his elephant for the first time to beware that the native gun-bearer does not rush him into firing too soon. They have not our medical knowledge which teaches us that the brain, heart and lungs are the best places to hit. They would hit them anywhere and trust to “medicine” to do the rest. I have been solemnly assured by native elephant hunters that it is not the bullet which causes the animal’s death, but the fire from the powder which enters the hole made by the bullet.

IV
AFRICAN “MEDICINE” OR WITCHCRAFT AND ITS BEARING ON SPORT

The ruling factor in the pagan African’s life is witchcraft, generally called throughout the continent “medicine.” All his doings are ruled by it. No venture can be undertaken without it. Should he be going into the bush on some trivial project he will pick up a stone and deposit it on what has through years become a huge pile. This is to propitiate some spirit. But this apparently does not fully ensure the success of the expedition, for should a certain species of bird call on the wrong side of the road the whole affair is off and he returns to his village to wait until another day when the omens are good.

In illness he recognises no natural laws; all is ascribed to medicine on the part of some enemy. Should his wife fail to produce the yearly baby, someone is making medicine against him through her. Hunting or raiding ventures are never launched without weeks of medicine making. The regular practitioners of this medicine are called “medicine men” or witch doctors. Their power is enormous and is hardly fully realised even by the European administrations, although several African penal codes now contain legislative efforts to curtail the practice of the evil eye and the black arts. These medicine men have always appeared to me to be extremely shrewd and cunning men who yet really believed in their powers. While all goes well their lot is an enviable one. Gifts of food are showered upon them. I suspect that they secretly eat the fowls and goats which are brought as sacrifices to propitiate the spirits: at any rate, these seem to disappear in a mysterious manner. Beer and women are theirs for the asking as long as all goes well. But, should the medicine man have a run of ill luck in his practice and be not too firmly established, he sometimes comes to grief. The most frequent cause of their downfall appears to occur in the foretelling of rain. Supposing a dry year happens to come along, as it so frequently does in Africa, everyone to save his crops resorts to the medicine man. They take to him paltry presents to begin with. No rain. They give him fowls, sheep and goats. Still no rain. They discuss it among themselves and conclude that he is not yet satisfied. More presents are given to him and, maybe, he is asked why he has not yet made the rain come. Never at a loss, he explains that there is a strong combination up against him, a very strong one, with which he is battling day and night. If he only had a bullock to sacrifice to such and such a spirit he might be able to overcome the opposition. And so it goes on. Cases are known among rich tribes where the medicine man has enriched himself with dozens of head of cattle and women. At this stage should rain appear all is well, and the medicine man is acclaimed the best of fellows and the greatest of the fraternity. But should its appearance be so tardy that the crops fail, then that medicine man has lost his job and has to flee to some far tribe. If he be caught he will, most probably, be stoned or clubbed to death.

To the elephant hunter the medicine man can sometimes be of great assistance. I once consulted a medicine man about a plague of honey-guides. These are African birds about the size of a yellowhammer, which have the extraordinary habit of locating wild bees’ nests and leading man to them by fluttering along in front of him, at the same time keeping up a continuous and penetrating twittering until the particular tree in which the nest is situated is reached. After the native has robbed the nest of its honey, by the aid of smoke and fire, he throws on the ground a portion—sometimes very small—of the grub-filled comb as a reward for the bird.

My experience occurred just after the big bush fires, when elephant are so easily tracked, their spoor standing out grey on the blackened earth. At this season, too, the bees’ nests contain honey and grubs. Hundreds of natives roam the bush and the honey-guides are at their busiest. Elephants were numerous, and for sixteen days I tracked them down and either saw or heard them stampede, warned of our presence by honey-guides, without the chance of a shot. Towards the end of this ghastly period my trackers were completely discouraged. They urged me to consult the medicine man, and I agreed to do so, thinking that at any rate my doing so would imbue the boys with fresh hope. Arrived at the village, in due course I visited the great man. His first remark was that he knew that I was coming to consult him, and that he also knew the reason of my visit. By this he thought to impress me, I suppose, but, of course, he had heard all about the honey-guides from my boys, although they stoutly denied it when I asked them after the interview was over. Yes, I said, I had come to see him about those infernal birds. And I told him he could have all the meat of the first elephant I killed if he could bring about that desirable end to my long hunt. He said he would fix it up. And so he did, and the very next day, too.

In the evening of the day upon which I had my consultation I was strolling about the village while my boys got food, prepared for another trip in the bush. Besides these preparations I noticed a lot of basket mending and sharpening of knives. One woman I questioned said she was coming with us on the morrow to get some elephant meat. I spoke to two or three others. They were all preparing to smoke and dry large quantities of meat, and they were all going with us. Great optimism prevailed everywhere. Even I began to feel that the turning in the lane was in sight. Late that night one of my trackers came to say that the medicine man wished me to stay in camp in the morning and not to proceed as I had intended. I asked the reason of this and he simply said that the medicine man was finding elephant for me and that when the sun was about so high (9 o’clock) I should hear some news.

ELEPHANT SLINKING AWAY, WARNED OF THE APPROACH OF MAN BY HONEY-GUIDES.

MEDICINE INDEED!

Soon after daybreak natives from the village began to arrive in camp. All seemed in great spirit, and everyone came with knives, hatchets, baskets and skin bags of food. They sat about in groups laughing and joking among themselves. Breakfast finished, the boys got everything ready for the march. What beat me was that everyone—my people included—seemed certain they were going somewhere. About 9.30 a native glistening with sweat arrived. He had seen elephant. How many? Three! Big ones? Yes! Hurriedly telling the chief to keep his people well in the rear, off we set at a terrific pace straight through the bush until our guide stopped by a tree. There he had left his companion watching the elephants. Two or three hundred yards further on we came to their tracks. Everywhere were the welcome signs of their having fed as they went. But, strangest thing of all, not a single honey-guide appeared. Off again as hard as we could go, the tracks running on ahead clear and distinct, light grey patches on a burnt ground with the little grey footmarks of the native ahead of us. In an hour or so we spotted him in a tree, and as we drew near we caught the grey glint of elephant. Still no honey-guides; blessings on the medicine man! Wind right, bush fairly open, it only remained to see if they were warrantable. That they were large bulls we already knew from their tracks. Leaving the boys, I was soon close behind the big sterns as they wandered gently along. In a few seconds I had seen their ivory sufficiently to know that one was really good and the other two quite shootable beasts. Now for the brain shot. Of all thrills in the world give me the standing within 20 yds. of good elephant, waiting for a head to turn to send a tiny nickel bullet straight to the brain. From toenail to top of back they were all a good 11 ft. Stepping a few yards to the left and keeping parallel with them I saw that the way to bag the lot was to shoot the leader first, although he was not the biggest. Letting pass one or two chances at the middle and rearmost beasts, I finally got a bullet straight into the leader’s brain. The middle one turned towards the shot and the nearest turned away from it, so that they both presented chances at their brains: the former an easy broadside standing, the latter a behind the ear shot and running. So hard did this one come down on his tusks that one of them was loose in its socket and could be drawn straight out. Almost immediately one could hear a kind of rush coming through the bush. The chief and his people were arriving. There seemed to be hundreds of them. And the noise and rejoicings! I put guards on the medicine man’s beast. From first to last no honey-guide had appeared. The reader must judge for himself whether there was any magic in the affair or not. What I think happened was this: knowing that the medicine man was taking the affair in hand and that he had promised elephant, the natives believed that elephant would be killed. Believing that, they were willing to look industriously for them in the bush. Great numbers of them scattered through the bush had the effect of splitting up and scattering the honey-guides, besides increasing the chances of finding elephant. The fact that we did not hear a single bird must have been mere chance, I think. But you could not convince an African of that. Natural causes and their effects have not a place in his mind. I remember once an elephant I had hit in the heart shook his head violently in his death throes. I was astounded to see one of his tusks fly out and land twelve paces away. The boys were awe-stricken when they saw what had happened. After ten minutes’ silence they started whispering to each other and then my gun-bearer came to speak to me. He solemnly warned me with emotion in his voice never to go near another elephant. If I did it would certainly kill me after what had occurred. It was quite useless my pointing out that the discarded tusk was badly diseased, and that it would have probably fallen out in a short time anyhow. No! No! Bwana, it is medicine! said they.

HE SHOOK HIS HEAD SO VIOLENTLY IN THE DEATH THROES THAT A TUSK FLEW OUT AND LANDED TWELVE PACES AWAY.

A M’BONI VILLAGE.

Perhaps twenty grass shelters are dotted here and there under the trees.

Some few years ago I was hunting in the Wa Boni country in British East Africa. The Wa Boni form an offshoot of the Sanya tribe and are purely hunters, having no fixed abode and never undertaking cultivation of any kind. They will not even own stock of any sort, holding that such ownership leads to trouble in the form of—in the old days—raids, and now taxation. Living entirely on the products of the chase, honey, bush fruits and vegetables, they are perhaps the most independent people in the world. They are under no necessity to combine for purposes of defence, having nothing to defend. Owning no plantations, they are independent of droughts. The limitless bush provides everything they want. Skins for wearing apparel, meat for eating, fibres of great strength for making string and ropes for snares, sinew for bowstrings, strong and tough wood for bows, clay for pottery, grass for shelter, water-tubers for drinking when water is scarce, fruit foods of all sorts; and all these for the gathering. No wonder they are reluctant to give up their roving life. I was living in one of the M’Boni villages, if village it could be called. It consisted of, perhaps, twenty grass shelters dotted here and there under the trees. It was the season when honey is plentiful, and there was a great deal of drinking of honey mead going on. This is simply made by mixing honey with water and supplying a ferment to it. There are several ferments in the bush, but on this particular occasion the seeds of the wild tree-calabash were being used. On the third day after brewing the mead is very intoxicating. A native will drink great quantities before getting really drunk, but when he does reach that stage he appears to remain so for many hours. I was once among a very wild and treacherous tribe where drunkenness was very prevalent. A nude gentleman about 6 ft. 5 ins. in height strolled into camp one day accompanied by his daughter. In his hand he carried two beautifully polished thrusting spears. The bartering of variously coloured beads, brass and iron wire, etc., for native flour was going on in camp. Watching this, our friend suddenly stooped down, snatched a handful of beads and made off with them in a leisurely manner. Immediately there was an uproar from my people, and a dozen boys gave chase to try to recover the stolen goods. At the same time the affair was reported to me in my tent. On emerging, I saw the tall black savage stalking across the open ground with a howling mob of my porters round him. Without turning to the right or left and without hurry he kept his two 10 ft. spears darting in all directions, and none could close with him. Something had to be done. At first I thought of doing something silly with a rifle, and then I had a brain-wave. I shouted to the boys to stone him. They jumped to the idea, and in three seconds that scoffing barbarian had his tail down and was running for dear life, amid all roars of laughter from both sides. Unluckily for him a rock weighing several pounds caught him on the back of the neck and over he went. Like a pack of terriers, my lads were on him, and presently he was borne back in triumph to camp. His strength was so prodigious and his naked body so covered in sheep’s fat that it took a dozen men to hold him. A public thrashing was now administered, in order to show the tribe that that kind of game would not do. But being quite drunk the only effect of the thrashing was to make the victim sing and laugh. This rather spoilt the effect of the whole thing, so I gave orders to tie him up until he was sober. Thus he passed the night, singing the whole time. Nothing could be done to silence him, but the camp guards kept pouring buckets of cold water over him to try to sober him up. In spite of this he was still supremely drunk next morning when we let him go.

M’SANYA BOW AND POISONED ARROW.

The poisoned part is carried, separately, from the shank, carefully wrapped in buckskin.

A PATRIARCH.

“A SMALL NATIVE BOY WAS IN THE ACT OF PINKING AN ENORMOUS ELEPHANT.”

One morning early, news came in to the Boni village that the tracks of two large bull elephants were to be seen not far off. Arrived at the tracks, it was evident that they had passed along there during the night. Soon the welcome signs of their having fed as they went were seen. Promising as these signs were, it was not until midday that we began to come up with them. Presently the tracks led us into a patch of dense evergreen forest, and here we expected to find them. Leaving my companions near the edge of the forest, I went in on the tracks as silently yet as quickly as possible. I went quickly because the wind was tricky, and it is always better on these occasions to get to close quarters as soon as you can, thereby lessening the chances of your game winding you. I was soon within hearing distance of the elephants. As I lifted my leg cautiously over some tangle of bush I could hear a deep sigh or an internal rumble from the dozing animals. Turning a bush the following scene disclosed itself. A small native boy was in the act of pinking an enormous elephant with his tiny reed arrow. Aiming for the big intestine of the father beast he let drive before I could stop him. In an instant all was uproar. The two elephants stampeded madly through the forest, crashing everything down in front of them, disappearing in a cloud of pollen, dust and leaves. The formerly still and sleepy bush seemed alive with crying monkeys and calling birds as the little boy proceeded coolly to pick up his guinea-fowl arrow where it had fallen after failing to pierce the elephant’s hide.

“Hullo, you little devil,” I said.

A half glance round and he was gone. The little sportsman had been simply amusing himself. Of course, the grown men of the Wa Boni kill elephants, but for this they use extraordinarily heavy arrows which require immensely powerful bows to propel them. Some of these bows require a pull of 100 lb. to get them out to the end of the wooden arrow where the poisoned part fits into a socket. There is some peculiar knack in this, as no other native I have seen—and certainly no white man—can get them more than half way, and yet these natives are very small and slight.

V
KARAMOJO

I.—Into the Unknown

My earliest recollection of myself is that of a child whose sole ambition in life was to hunt. At a very early age I conceived the idea of hunting the American bison. With this end in view I gathered together a few oddments, such as the barrels of a double-barrelled pistol, a clasp knife, a few bits of string and all the money—chiefly pennies—that I could lay hands on. This bison-hunting expedition was prematurely cut short at the Port of Glasgow by the critical state of its finances, for after buying a pork pie for twopence its treasury was found to be almost empty. This was a sad blow, and it was while thinking it over on a doorstep that a kindly policeman instituted proceedings which resulted in the lost and crestfallen child being restored to his family. But the growth of years and the acquirement of the art of reading—by which I discovered that bison no longer existed in America—my ambition became fixed on becoming an elephant hunter. The reading of Gordon Cumming’s books on Africa finished the business. An elephant hunter I determined to become; this idea never left me. Finally, after all kinds of vicissitudes I arrived in Africa and heard of a wonderful new and unexplored country called Karamojo. Elephants were reported by the black traders to be very numerous with enormous tusks, and there was no sort of administration to hamper the hunter with restrictions and game laws. Above all there appeared to be no other person hunting elephants in this Eldorado except the natives, and they had no firearms. My informants told me that the starting point for all safaris (caravans) was Mumias, a native town and Government Post at the foot of Mount Elgon, which formed the last outpost of civilisation for a traveller proceeding North.

At the time of which I write Mumias was a town of some importance. It was the base for all trading expeditions to the Lake Rudolph basin, Turkana, Dabossa and the Southern Abyssinia country. In the first few years of the trade in ivory this commodity was obtained for the most trifling sums; for instance, a tusk worth £50 or £60 could be bought for two or three shillings’ worth of beads or iron wire. As time went on and more traders flocked to Karamojo to share in the huge profits of the ivory trade, competition became keener. Prices rose higher and higher. Where once beads and iron wire sufficed to buy a tusk, now a cow must be paid. Traders were obliged to go further and further afield to find new territory until they came in violent contact with raiding parties of Abyssinians away in the far North.

When most of the dead ivory in the country had been traded off the only remaining source was the yearly crop of tusks from the elephants snared and killed by the native Karamojans. For these comparatively few tusks competition became so keen and prices so high that there was no longer any profit when as much as eight or ten cows had to be paid for a large tusk, and the cows bought down at the base for spot cash and at prices of from £2 to £5 each. Hence arose the idea in the brains of two or three of the bolder spirits among the traders to take by force that which they could no longer afford to buy. Instead of traders they became raiders. In order to ensure success to a raid an alliance would be made with some tribe which was already about equal in strength to its neighbours through centuries of intertribal warfare. The addition of three or four hundred guns to the tribe’s five or six thousand spear-men rendered the result of this raid by the combined forces almost beyond doubt, and moreover, conferred upon the raiders such complete domination of the situation that they were able to search out and capture the young girls, the acquisition of which is the great aim and object of all activity in the Mohammedan mind.

Complete and magnificent success attending the first raiding venture the whole country changed magically. The hitherto more or less peaceful looking trading camps gave place to huge armed Bomas surrounded by high thorn fences. Everyone—trader or native—went about armed to the teeth. Footsore or sick travellers from caravans disappeared entirely, or their remains were found by the roadside. Native women and cattle were heavily guarded, for no man trusted a stranger.

Into this country of suspicion and brooding violence I was about to venture. As soon as my intention became known among the traders at Mumias I encountered on every side a firm barrage of lies and dissuasion of every sort. The buying of pack donkeys was made impossible. Guides were unobtainable. Information about the country north of Turkwell was either distorted and false or entirely withheld. I found that no Mohammedan boy would engage with me. The reason for all this apparently malicious obstruction on the part of the trading community was not at the time known to me, but it soon became clear when I had crossed the Turkwell and found that the peaceful, polite and prosperous looking trader of Mumias became the merciless and bloody Dacoit as soon as he had crossed that river and was no longer under European control. Numbering among them, as they did, some pretty notorious ex-slavers, they knew how unexpectedly far the arm of the law could sometimes reach and they no doubt foresaw that nothing but trouble would arise from my visit to the territory they had come to look upon as theirs by right of discovery. It surprises me now, when I think of how much they had at stake, that they resorted to no more stringent methods than those related above to prevent my entry into Karamojo. As it was I soon got together some bullocks and some pagan boys. The bullocks I half trained to carry packs and the Government Agent very kindly arranged that I should have eight Snider rifles with which to defend myself, and to instil confidence among my Baganda and Wanyamwere and Kavirondo boys. The Sniders looked well and no one knew except myself that the ammunition for them was all bad. And then I had my personal rifles, at that time a ·303 Lee-Enfield, a ·275 Rigby-Mauser and a double ·450-·400, besides a Mauser pistol which could be used as a carbine and which soon acquired the name of “Bom-Bom” and a reputation for itself equal to a hundred ordinary rifles.

While searching through some boxes of loose ammunition in the store at Mumias in the hope of finding at least a few good rounds for my Snider carbines I picked up a Martini-Henry cartridge, and while looking at its base it suddenly struck me that possibly it could be fired from a Snider. And so it proved to be. The base being ·577 calibre fitted perfectly, but the bullet, being only ·450 bore, was scarcely what you might call a good fit for a ·577 barrel, and there was, of course, no accuracy to the thing at all. But it went off with a bang and the propensity of its bullet to fly off at the most disconcerting angles after rattling through the barrel from side to side seemed just to suit the style of aiming adopted by my eight askaris (soldiers), for on several occasions jackal and hyena were laid low while prowling round the camp at night.

Bright and early next morning my little safari began to get itself ready for the voyage into the Unknown. The loads were got out and lined up. First of all an askari, with a Snider rifle very proud in a hide belt with five Martini cartridges gleaming yellow in it. He had carefully polished them with sand for the occasion. Likewise the barrel of the old Snider showed signs of much rubbing, and a piece of fat from the tail of a sheep dangled by a short string from the hammer. Then my chop-boxes, and camp gear borne by porters, followed by my boy Suede and Suliemani, the cook, of cannibal parentage be it whispered. As usual, all the small loads seemed to be jauntily and lightly perched on the massive heads and necks of the biggest porters, while the big loads looked doubly big in comparison to the spindly shanks which appeared below them. One enormous porter in particular drew my attention. He was capering about in the most fantastic manner with a large box on his head. From the rattle which proceeded from the box I perceived that this was the cook’s mate, and as I possessed only a few aluminium cooking pots, his was perhaps the lightest load of any, and I vowed that he should have a good heavy tusk to carry as soon as possible. This I was enabled to do soon after passing the Turkwell, and this splendid head-carrier took entire charge of a tusk weighing 123 lb., carrying it with pride for several hundred weary miles on a daily ration of 1 lb. of mtama grain and unlimited buck meat.

Usually when a safari started from Mumias for the “Barra”—as the bush or wilderness is called—the townsfolk would turn out with drums and horns to give them a send off, but in our case we departed without any demonstration of that sort. We passed through almost deserted and silent streets, and we struck out for the Turkwell, the trail skirting the base of Elgon for six days, as we travelled slowly, being heavily laden. I was able to find and shoot enough haartebeeste and oribi to keep the safari in meat, and after two or three days’ march the boys became better and better and the bullocks more and more docile. I purposely made the marches more easy at first in order to avoid sore backs, and it was easy to do so, as there were good streams of water crossing our path every few miles.

On the seventh day we reached the Turkwell River. After descending several hundred feet from the high plateau we crossed by the ford and pitched camp on the opposite or north bank. The Turkwell has its sources in the crater of Elgon and its slopes. Its waters reach the dry, hot plains of Karamojo after a drop of about 9,000 ft. in perhaps twenty or thirty miles. In the dry season—when it is fordable almost anywhere—it totally disappears into its sandy river bed while still some days’ march from its goal, Lake Rudolph. It is a queer and romantic river, for it starts in lava 14,000 ft. above sea-level, traverses bitterly cold and often snow-covered heath land, plunges down through the dense bamboo belt, then through dark and dripping evergreen forest to emerge on the sandy plains of Karamojo. From this point to Rudolph its banks are clothed with a more or less dense belt of immense flat-topped thorn trees interspersed with thickets of every kind of thorny bush, the haunt of rhino, buffalo and elephant. Throughout its entire course its waters were drunk, at the time of which I write, by immense herds of elephant during the dry season. Even after disappearing underground, elephant and natives easily procured water by simply making holes in the soft clean sands of its river bed.

At that time the Turkwell formed the northern boundary of European rule. North of it was no rule but disrule. The nearest cultivated settlement of Karamojo natives was at Mani-Mani, some 150 miles to the north, but scattered about in the bush were many temporary settlements of poor Karamojans who got their living by hunting and snaring everything from elephant downwards.

Dreadful tales of murders of peaceful travellers had been related by Swahilis, and we were careful not to let anyone straggle far from the main body. At night my eight askaris mounted guard and kept a huge fire going. Their vigilance was extraordinary, and their keenness and cheerfulness, fidelity and courage of a very high order, showing them to be born soldiers. Their shooting was simply atrocious, in spite of practice with a ·22 I had, but notwithstanding their inability to align and aim a rifle properly, they used sometimes to bring off the most brilliant shots under the most impossible conditions of shooting light, thereby showing a great natural aptitude to point a gun and time the shot.

While we were drying out the gear that had got wet while crossing the Turkwell two natives strolled into the camp. These were the first Karamojans we had seen, and I was very much interested in them. They showed great independence of bearing as they stood about leaning on their long thrusting spears. I had some difficulty in getting into conversation with them, although I had an excellent interpreter. They seemed very taciturn and suspicious. However, I got it explained to them that I had come for one purpose only, i.e., to hunt elephant. They admitted that there were plenty of elephant, but when I asked them to show me where to look for them they merely asked me how I proposed to kill them when I did see them. On showing them my rifle they laughed, and said they had seen Swahili traders using those things for elephants and, although they killed men well enough, they were useless against elephant. My answer to this was that I had procured some wonderful medicine which enabled me to kill the largest-sized elephant with one shot, and that if they would like to see this medicine working all they had to do was to show me where the elephant were and that I would do the rest and they should have as much meat as they wanted. They retorted that if my medicine was truly sufficiently powerful to kill an elephant instantaneously, then they could not believe that it would fail to show me their whereabouts also. This grave fault in my medicine had to be explained, and I could only say that I grieved heartily over the deficiency, which I attributed to the jealousy of a medicine man who was a rival of him who had given me the killing medicine. This left them not altogether satisfied, but a better impression was produced when I presented them with a quarter of buck meat, while telling them that I killed that kind of meat every day. They went off without holding out any hope of showing me elephant, and I thought that I had seen the last of them. I sat until late in my long chair by the camp fire under a brilliant sky and wonderful moon listening to the talk of my Nzamwezi boys and wondering how we were going to fare in the real wild land ahead of us.

An early start was made next morning and we had covered perhaps six or seven miles when the two natives, visitors to our camp of yesterday, came stalking along appearing to cover the ground at a great rate without showing any hurry or fuss. I stopped and called the interpreter and soon learned that four large elephants had that morning passed close to their camp in the bush and that when they left to call me the elephants could still be heard in the vicinity. At once I was for going, but the interpreter and the headman both cautioned me against treachery, declaring that it was only a blind to separate us preparatory to a general massacre. This view I thought a bit far fetched, but I ordered the safari to get under weigh and to travel well together until they reached the first water, where they were immediately to cut sufficient thorn trees to completely encircle themselves in camp, to keep a good look-out and to await my coming.

Taking my small boy and the gigantic cook’s mate—whose feather-weight load I had transferred to the cook’s head—I hastily put together a few necessities and hurried off with the two Karamojans at a great pace. We soon struck off from the main trail and headed for the Turkwell Valley. Straight through the open thorn bush we went, the elephant hide sandals of my native guides crunching innumerable darning-needle-sized thorns underfoot, the following porters with their light loads at a jog trot, myself at a fast but laboured walk, while the guides simply soaked along with consummate ease.

Supremely undemonstrative as natives usually are, there was yet observable a kind of suppressed excitement about their bearing, and I noticed that whenever a certain bird called on the right hand the leader would make a low remark to his companions with an indescribably satisfied kind of gesture, whereas the same calling on the left hand drew no notice from them beyond a certain increased forward resolution and a stiff ignoring of it.

The significance of these signs were lost on me at that time, but I was to come to learn them well in my later dealings with these tribes. They were omens and indicated success or failure to our hunting.

On the whole they were apparently favourable. At any rate, the pace never slackened, and I was beginning to wish for a slowing down. As we drew nearer the Turkwell Valley signs of elephant became more and more numerous. Huge paths worn perfectly smooth and with their edges cut as clear as those of garden walks by the huge pads of the ponderous animals began to run together, forming more deeply worn ones converging towards the drinking places on the river. Occasionally the beautiful lesser koodoo stood watching us or loped away, flirting its white fluffed tail. Once we passed a rhino standing motionless with snout ever directed towards us. A small detour round him as we did not wish to get mixed up with his sort and on again. Halt! The little line bunches up against the motionless natives. A distant rumble resembling somewhat a cart crossing a wooden bridge, and after a few seconds of silence the crash of a broken tree.

Elephant! Atome! (in Karamojo). Word the first to be learned and the last to be forgotten of any native language. A kind of excitement seizes us all; me most of all, the Karamojans least. Now the boys are told to stay behind and to make no noise. They are at liberty to climb trees if they like. I look to my ·303, but, of course, it had been ready for hours. Noting that the wind—what there was of it—was favourable, the natives and I go forward, and soon we come upon the broken trees, mimosa and white thorn, the chewed fibrous balls of sansivera, the moist patches with froth still on them, the still steaming and unoxidised spoor, and the huge tracks with the heavily imprinted clear-cut corrugations of a very recently passing bunch of bull elephants. In numbers they were five as nearly as I could estimate. Tracking them was child’s play, and I expected to see them at any moment. It was, however, much longer than I anticipated before we sighted their dull grey hides. For they were travelling as well as feeding. It is remarkable how much territory elephant cover when thus feeding along. At first sight they seem to be so leisurely, and it is not until one begins to keep in touch with them that their speed is realised. Although they appear to take so few steps, each step of their lowest gait is about 6 ft. Then, again, in this feeding along there is always at least one of the party moving forward at about 3½ miles per hour, although the other members may be stopping and feeding, then catching up again by extending the stride to 7 ft. or more.

As soon as they were in sight I got in front of the Karamojans and ran in to about 20 yds. from the stern of the rearmost animal. Intense excitement now had me with its usual signs, hard breathing through the mouth, dry palate and an intense longing to shoot.

As I arrived at this close proximity I vividly remember glancing along the grey bulging sides of the three rearmost animals, who all happened to be in motion at the same time in single file, and remarking a tusk of an incredible length and size sweeping out from the grey wall. I instantly determined to try for this one first. With extraordinary precautions against making a noise, and stoopings and contortions of the body, all of which after-experience taught me were totally unnecessary, I got away off at right-angles to the file of elephants and could now grasp the fact that they were all very large and carried superb ivory.

I was now almost light-headed with excitement, and several times on the very verge of firing a stupid and hasty shot from my jumping and flickering rifle. So shaky was it when I once or twice put it to my shoulder that even in my then state of mind I saw that no good could come of it. After a minute or two, during which I was returning to a more normal state, the animal with the largest tusks left the line slightly, and slowly settled into a halt beside a mimosa bush. I got a clear glimpse at his broadside at what looked about 20 yds., but was really 40 yds., and I fired for his heart. With a flinch, a squirm and a roar he was soon in rapid motion straight away, with his companions in full flight ahead of him. I was rather surprised at this headlong flight after one shot as I had expected the elephant here to be more unsophisticated, but hastily concluding that the Swahili traders must have been pumping lead into them more often than one imagined, I legged it for the cloud of dust where the fleeting animals had disappeared. Being clad in running shorts and light shoes, it was not long before I almost ran slap up against a huge and motionless grey stern. Recoiling very rapidly indeed from this awe-inspiring sight, I saw on one side of it an enormous head and tusk which appeared to stick out at right-angles. So drooping were the trunk and ears and so motionless the whole appearance of what had been a few seconds ago the very essence of power and activity that it was borne straight to even my inexperienced mind that here was death. And so it was, for as I stared goggle-eyed the mighty body began to sway from side to side more and more, until with a crash it fell sideways, bearing earthwards with it a fair sized tree. Straight past it I saw another elephant, turned almost broadside, at about 100 yds. distance, evidently listening and obviously on the point of flight. Running a little forward so as to get a clear sight of the second beast, I sat quickly down and fired carefully at the shoulder, when much the same performance took place as in the first case, except that No. 2 came down to a slow walk after a burst of speed instead of to a standstill as with No. 1.

Ranging rapidly alongside I quickly put him out of misery and tore after the others which were, of course, by this time, thoroughly alarmed and in full flight. After a mile or two of fast going I found myself pretty well done, so I sat down and rolled myself a cigarette of the strong black shag so commonly smoked by the Swahilis. Presently my native guides came with every appearance of satisfaction on their now beaming faces.

After a few minutes’ rest we retracked the elephant back to where our two lay dead. The tusks of the first one we examined were not long but very thick, and the other had on one side a tusk broken some 2 ft. outside the lip, while on the other was the magnificent tusk which had filled me with wonder earlier on. It was almost faultless and beautifully curved. What a shame that its companion was broken!

As we were cutting the tail off, which is always done to show anyone finding the carcase that it has been killed and claimed, my good fellows came up with the gear and the interpreter. Everyone, including myself, was in high good humour, and when the Karamojans said that their village was not far off we were more pleased than ever, especially as the sun was sinking rapidly. After what appeared to the natives no doubt as a short distance, but what seemed to my sore feet and tired legs a very long one, we saw the welcome fires of a camp and were soon sitting by one while a group of naked savages stood looking silently at the white man and his preparations for eating and sleeping. These were simple enough. A kettle was soon on the fire for tea, while some strips of sun-cured haartebeeste biltong writhed and sizzled on the embers. Meanwhile my boys got the bed ready by first of all cutting the grass and smoothing down the knobs of the ground while another spread grass on it to form a mattress. Over this the canvas sheet and blankets and with a bag of cartridges wrapped in a coat for a pillow the bed was complete. Then two forked sticks stuck in the ground close alongside the bed to hold the rifle and all was ready for the night.

II.—Ivory and the Raiders

After a hearty supper of toasted biltong and native flour porridge, washed down with tea, I cleaned my rifle, loaded it and lay down utterly tired out and soon dropped off to the music of hyenas’ howling. As soon as ever it was light enough to see, we left for the dead elephant, and the way did not seem half so long in the fresh morning air as it had appeared the evening before. We quickly arrived, followed by all the villagers, men, women and children, every one in high spirits at the sight of the mountains of meat. In this country the meat of elephants is esteemed more highly than that of any other animal, as it contains much more fat. The Karamojan elephants are distinguished for their bodily size, the quality and size of their ivory and for the quantity of fat on them.

I was anxious to get the tusks out as rapidly as possible in order to rejoin my caravan, so I divided the Karamojans into two gangs and explained to them that no one was to touch the carcases until the tusks were out, but that then they could have all the meat. They set to with a will to get all the skin and flesh off the head. It is necessary to do this so as to expose the huge bone sockets containing the ends of the tusks. About a third of their length is so embedded, and a very long, tedious and hard job it is to get all the skin and gristle cut away. Nothing blunts a knife more quickly than elephant hide, because of the sand and grit in its loose texture.

When the skull is clean on one side the neck should be cut. This alone is a herculean task. The vertebra severed, the head is turned over by eight or ten men, and the other side similarly cleaned. When both sockets are ready an axe is used to chop them away chip by chip until the tusk is free. This chopping should always be done by an expert, as otherwise large chips off the tusk itself are liable to be taken by the axe.

This chopping out of ivory is seldom resorted to by natives, requiring as it does so much hard work. They prefer to leave the sun and putrefaction to do the work for them. On the third day after the death the upper tusk can usually be drawn without difficulty from the socket and the underneath one on the following day.

On this particular occasion no one was at all adept at chopping out, and it was hours before the tusks were freed. Later on my Wanzamwezi boys became very expert indeed at this job, and twelve of them, whose particular job it became, could handle as many as ten bull elephants in a day provided they were not too distant one from the other and that they had plenty of native assistance.

While the chopping out was going on I had leisure to watch the natives, and what struck me first was the remarkable difference between the men and the women. The former were tall, some of them quite 6 ft. 4 ins., slim and well made, while the latter were distinctly short, broad, beefy and squat. The married ones wore aprons of dressed buckskin tied round the waist by the legs of the skin and ornamented with coloured beads sewn on with sinew thread. The unmarried girls wore no skins at all and had merely a short fringe of black thread attached to a string round the waist and falling down in front. As regards hair, all the women wore it plaited and falling down all round the head and giving somewhat the appearance of “bobbed” hair. Some of the men wore the most extraordinary-looking periwigs made up of their own and also their ancestors’ hair mixed with clay so as to form a kind of covering for the top of the head and falling down the back of the neck. In this pad of human felt were set neat little woven sockets in such a way as to hold upright an ostrich feather in each.

The people with whom we are dealing at the moment were poor and therefore hunters. Africans differ from us entirely on the question of hunting; whereas among us it is the well-off who hunt, among them it is the poor. Having nothing but a few goats and sheep, these hunters inhabit the bush, shifting their village from site to site according to the movements of the game.

Their system of taking game is the snare; their only weapon a spear. The art of snaring has been brought to a unique development by these people, for they have snares varying in size for all animals from elephant down to dik-dik.

The snare for elephant is a great hawser, 4½ ins. in diameter, of twisted antelope or giraffe hides. One may find in the same rope haartebeeste hide, eland, zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo and giraffe hide. If made of haartebeeste alone no less than eleven or twelve skins are required. The skins are scraped and pounded with huge wooden mallets for weeks by the women before being twisted or “laid” into the rope which is to form the snare. The running nooses at both ends are beautifully made. Besides the snare there is a thing like a cart wheel without any hub and with scores of thin spokes meeting in the centre where their points are sharp. The snare is laid in the following manner:

A well frequented elephant path is chosen and somewhere near the spot decided upon for the snare a large tree is cut. Judgment in the choosing of this must be exercised as if it is too heavy the snare will break, and if too light the snared elephant will travel too far. A tree trunk which ten or twelve men can just stagger along with seems to be the thing. This log is then brought to the scene of action and at its smaller end a deep groove is cut all round to take the noose at one end of the rope. After this noose has been fitted and pulled and hammered tight—no easy matter—the log is laid at right angles to the path with the smaller end pointing towards it. A hole a good bit larger than an elephant’s foot is then dug in the path itself to a depth of two feet or so. Over this hole is fitted the cart wheel. Round the rim the large noose of the snare is laid and the whole covered carefully over with earth to resemble the path again. The snare is now laid, and if all goes well some solitary old bull comes wandering along at night, places his foot on the earth borne by the sharp spokes of the hubless wheel, goes through as the spokes open downwards, lifts his foot and with it the wheel bearing the noose well up the ankle, strides forward and tightens the noose. The more he pulls the tighter draws the noose until the log at the other end of the snare begins to move. Now alarmed and presently angry, he soon gets rid of the cart wheel, but as its work is already done, that does not matter. The dragging log is now securely attached to the elephant’s leg, and it is seldom that he gets rid of it unless it should jamb in rocks or trees. Soon he becomes thoroughly alarmed and sets off at a great pace, the log ploughing along behind him. Should a strong, vigorous young bull become attached to a rather light log, he may go twenty or thirty miles.

As soon as it becomes known to the natives that an elephant has been caught, everyone within miles immediately seizes all his spears and rushes to the spot where the snare had been set and from there eagerly takes up the trail of the log. When they come up with the somewhat exhausted animal they spear it to death. Then every scrap of meat is shared among the village which owns the snare, the tusks becoming the property of the man who made and laid the snare. The spearing of an elephant, with its enormously thick hide, is no easy matter, as the animal can still make short active rushes. Casualties are not infrequent, and should anyone be caught he is, as a rule, almost certain to be killed.

POOR KARAMOJANS, SHOWING PERIWIGS.

CARRYING THE IVORY.

While the tusk-getting operations were going on I took the opportunity to examine the respective positions of the heart, lungs and brain in relation to the conspicuous points of the animal’s exterior, such as the eye, the ear, the line of the fore leg and the point of the shoulder. In order to fix the position of the heart and lungs I made some boys get the stomach and intestines out. This was a terrific job, but we were ably assisted by the powerful native women. The “innards” of elephant are very greatly prized by all natives who eat elephant. The contents of the stomach must have weighed a ton, I should think, and I saw the intestine or sack which contains the clear pure water so readily drunk by the hunter during the dry season when he finds himself far from water. It is from this internal tank that the elephant can produce water for the purpose of treating himself to a shower bath when there is no water. He brings it up into his throat, whence it is sucked into the trunk and then delivered where required. The first time I saw an elephant doing this I thought he must be standing by a pool of water from which he was drawing it. I was many weary miles from water and the sun was scorching, and I and the boy with me were very thirsty, so we hastened towards the elephant, which moved on slowly through the bush. Very soon we arrived at the spot where we had seen him at his shower bath, but no spring or pool could I find. I asked the Karamojan about it and he then told me, with a smile at my ignorance, that the nearest water was at our camp and that all elephant carried water inside them and need not replenish their stock for three days. Coming up with the elephant I killed him and got Pyjalé (my Karamojan tracker) to pierce its water tank, and sure enough water, perfectly clear barring a little blood, gushed out, which we both drank greedily. It was warm certainly, but quite tasteless and odourless and very wholesome and grateful.

When everything had been got out, except the lungs and heart, I had spears thrust through from the direction from which a bullet would come. I meanwhile peered into the huge cavity formed by the massive ribs and when a spear pierced a lung or the heart, I immediately examined its situation and tried to commit it to my memory. One thing I noticed was that with the animal lying on its side the heart did not occupy the cavity which was obviously intended for it when upright, therefore an allowance had to be made. Another thing I was impressed with was the size of the arteries about the heart. It extended the killing area a considerable distance above the heart, and I have often since killed elephant with a shot above the heart. About the situation of the brain I also learned a lot. I thought I had its position fixed to a nicety in my mind, but I subsequently found that all I had learned was one of the many positions the brain does not occupy. And it was by a series of these misplacings that I finally came to know where the brain really does lie. It is a small object contained in a very large head. It lies so far from the exterior that a very slight and almost unnoticeable change of angle causes the bullet to miss it completely.

ELEPHANT SNARE NET SET, BUT NOT YET COVERED.

KARAMOJAN WARRIOR.

After a warrior has killed anyone he is entitled to wear a white ostrich feather dipped blood-red, and tattoo himself on the right side if the slain was a man and the left if a woman.

From this my first dealing with Karamojans it began to be borne in on me that they were not so bad as the Swahili traders had tried to make out. And my subsequent dealings with them confirmed this impression. As far as I was concerned I had hardly any trouble with them. But at the same time some terrible massacres took place while I was in their country. These affairs were the most completely successful operations I have ever heard of from the native point of view. On three occasions massacres of well armed trading caravans were attempted, and on two there were no survivors among the traders and no casualties among the natives, while on the third there was one trader survivor who escaped. I will describe later on the methods employed by the natives so successfully, for it was not until my Karamojan friend Pyjalé came to me that I heard the inside of the thing. For the next few days nothing of note happened except that we passed the remains of two black men by the roadside—stragglers from some trading caravan probably, judging by the bits of cloth lying about. Now here was a state of things requiring explanation. We were now close to Mani-Mani, the up-country base for all trading caravans. Mani-Mani was also a populous centre for Karamojans, with whom the traders were perforce at peace. And yet here on the roads were two murdered men obviously belonging to the traders. On my arrival at Mani-Mani I found the explanation. It was thus: Among Karamojans, as among Masai, Somals and other tribes, a young man is of no consideration, has no standing with the girls, until he has killed someone. It does not matter how he kills him, he may be asleep or unarmed. When he has “done someone in,” either man or woman, other than Karamojan of course, he has the right to tattoo the right side of his body for a man victim and the left side for a woman. Moreover, at the dances he mounts a very tall ostrich feather dipped blood red, and then he is looked upon as a man. He may and does now demand anything from the unmarried girls. He may flog them should they resist. And this atrocious incitement to murder is the cause of death to any leg-weary straggler from caravans. That the Swahili leaders never made these way side murders a casus belli shows them to be what they are, callous snivellers. That they could have put down this custom was shown when some of my boys lost their way among the villages. As soon as it was reported to me I at once got together five of my askaris and raced off among the herds of Karamojan cattle. We rounded up a huge mob and held them more or less in one place. Spearmen rushed about, women holloaed, and shields were produced from every hut. I was so hot and angry—thinking that the missing boys had been murdered—that I was eager to begin by attacking straightaway. It looked as if about 400 spear-men were assembled and I meant to give them a genuine shaking up with my 10-shot ·303, followed by my 10-shot Mauser pistol. I felt confident that as soon as I let loose on them and killed one or two the others would run like rabbits. It never came to a fight, for some old unarmed men and women came tottering up, picking grass at every step, biting it in two and casting the bits to the winds. This meant peace; peace at any price. Where were my porters? They did not know, really they did not. But they would be all right. Nobody would harm them. I told them to go and produce every one of them unharmed or I would take and kill all their cattle and a lot of them besides. Moreover, if any armed man approached anywhere near to the cattle I would shoot him dead. The cattle would remain there—between ourselves we could not have handled them—until the porters were produced.

And produced they were, very quickly. They had merely lost their way among the villages and had been guided back.

I did not regret having had this opportunity of showing the natives that as far as my people were concerned we were prepared to fight savagely for any member of the safari and not—as did the traders—let stragglers be murdered without even a protest. The noise of this affair travelled far and probably saved us a lot of trouble in our after dealings.

Another reason for this apathy on the part of the Swahili leaders was, I think, that the certainty of murder awaiting anyone on the road prevented desertion. They were enabled by this means to keep their boys for years without payment of wages. So long as they could prevent the boys from reaching Mumias alive there was no redress. Hence it was difficult for the Government representative at Mumias to get reliable information of the internal state of Karamojo.

On our arrival at Mani-Mani we were met by one Shundi—a remarkable man. Kavirondo by birth, he had been captured early in life, taken to the coast and sold as a slave. Being a man of great force of character he had soon freed himself by turning Mohammedan. Thence onward fortune had smiled upon him until at last here he was, the recognised chief Tajir (rich man) of all the traders. Having naturally the intelligence to recognise the value of bluff and from his primitive ancestors the nerve to carry it off, he was at this time the greatest of all the traders. Just as he had been a leader while slave-raiding was the order of the day, so now he led when ivory had given place to slaves as a commodity. One other thing makes him conspicuous, at any rate, in my mind, and that was the fact that he had owned the slave who had laid low the elephant which bore the enormous tusks, one of which now reposes in the South Kensington Museum. These tusks are still, as far as I know, the record. The one which we have in London scales 234 lb. or thereabouts. According to Shundi his slave killed it with a muzzle-loader on the slopes of Kilimandjaro.

Shundi was accompanied by a large body of traders of all sorts. There were Arabs, Swahilis, one or two Persians and a few African born Baluchis, and a pretty tough lot they looked. Beside their mean and cunning air Shundi—the great coal-black Bantu—appeared like a lion among hyenas. What an extraordinary calm and dignity some of these outstanding black men have. Here was a kin spirit to Buba Gida.

They hated my appearing in their country, but did not show it. Shundi took it in the spirit that what had to be had to be, but some of the lesser villains were obviously nervous. They pretended to wish me to camp inside the town, but I preferred to remain outside. The town was of very considerable size, although the buildings were of a temporary construction. I remarked an extraordinary number of women about and thought that I recognised Masai types among them. This was so, as I afterwards learnt that Shundi alone had over eighty women, many of whom were Masai from Kilimandjaro.

With native politeness gifts of food, etc., were offered and presently all withdrew, intimating that they would return when I had rested.

They must have been feeling rather uncomfortable about the appearance in their midst of a white man, possibly an agent of that detestable Government so troublesome about raiding. I did not actually know at the time, but learnt afterwards that at the very moment of my arrival in their midst they had an enormous raid on the Turkana underway.

In the afternoon they came again and we had the usual ceremonial palaver. Every one was strictly guarded, but they made a distinct effort to embroil me with the natives in the hope, I suppose, of getting me so mixed up in some shooting affair that I would become more or less one of themselves. I refused to have anything to do with their intrigues. I got little information regarding elephant from these people. In fact, neither side could quite overcome a severely suppressed but quite strong hostility to the other.

I stayed a few days at Mani-Mani as there were repairs to be attended to and man and beast required a rest. The first sign of trouble soon appeared, caused, I feel certain, by Swahili intrigue. It was the dry season and all animals were watered once a day at the wells dug in the otherwise dry river-bed. My animals were being watered as usual. That is, water was drawn from the well in buckets and emptied into a watertight ground sheet laid over a suitable depression in the sand. Word was suddenly brought to me that the natives refused to allow my animals to be watered. I went at once to the scene and asked the natives what all the trouble was about. There were about forty young bloods leaning against their spears and they laughed in the most insolent manner without giving me any answer. I turned to my herds and beckoned them to bring up the animals. As they began to do so three of the bloods strode over and began flogging the thirsty bullocks in the face and driving them off. It was now or never, first impression and so on. I seized from the nearest Karamojan his cutting-edged club, sprang over to one of the bullock obstructors and dealt him the hardest blow on the head I possibly could. I was fairly hefty, in good training, and meant all I knew. To my astonishment the native turned on me a smile instead of dropping dead or at least stunned, while the club flew to atoms. I had hit his shock-absorbing periwig, previously described. I might as well have hit a Dunlop Magnum.

I must confess it was rather a set-back. However, one good effect it had was that everyone, except myself, roared with laughter, and then when even I began to see the humour of it I spotted a mischievous devil calmly jabbing his spear through our priceless waterproof ground sheet. This would not do, so I drew my Mauser pistol. Now these natives were then at a most dangerous stage of ignorance with regard to firearms. Their experience of them had been gathered on raids with the Swahilis, and they all firmly held the conviction that all you had to do to avoid being struck by the bullet was to duck when you saw the smoke. While I was fitting the wooden holster to the Mauser they watched me carefully. They had probably never seen such a gun before if they even recognised it as such. When therefore I had it fitted up and was covering them no one moved. They were waiting, I suspect, for the smoke. And when they heard the particularly vicious bang of the little Mauser and saw no smoke, the laugh this time was rather on them, and especially on the gentleman who had been so busy with his spear and my ground sheet; for he now stood looking at a half severed and completely spoilt spear in his hand with a ridiculous air of surprised injury. In a few seconds the humour of this phase struck all concerned, although the natives began to edge nervously away. All their swagger was gone now. I had been approaching the fellow with the damaged spear, and now suddenly set upon him, relying upon my herds to help me. Never have I felt anything like the sinewy strength of that greasy native; he was all but off when the boys secured him just in time. Seeing some flourishing of spears going on among the others, I began pasting dust about them with the little Mauser. Seeing no smoke again, yet getting whing whang right and left of them, they turned and bolted. I got in another clip of ten and kept them dodging dust-bursts for 400 or 500 yds.

On returning I put it out among the natives that our prisoner would be released when ten goats and sheep had been paid by his family as a fine. They were soon forthcoming.

Up till now I had been looked upon by the natives as a sort of poor Arab. In this idea they were no doubt helped by the traders. They had never seen white men, and they saw my mean little safari and drew their own conclusions from appearances. But after the affair at the water hole I was treated with much greater respect, and with a kind of good-humoured indulgence, much as a very persistent headstrong child might be looked upon. And eventually, after a few more “incidents,” we became fast friends and they would do almost anything for me or for my people. One instance of this I may as well here record, although it happened long afterwards.

Away down in civilised parts I had left two aged Wanyamwezi boys in charge of my cattle ranch. This was situated a few miles from Nandi Boma (Government Post). At the Boma post office I had left directions for my letters to be forwarded to another Boma on the slopes of Elgon, where I used to send every six months or so to get them. All my letters went as directed until there occurred a change of District Commissioner. Now one of my old pensioners looking after the ranch had orders to report every fortnight to the D.C. that all was well or otherwise. In pursuit of these instructions the old boy appeared one day before the new D.C., who asked him who he was. He said he belonged to me, naming me. The D.C. said he had some letters for me, and told the boy to take them to me, thinking that I was at the ranch a few miles off, instead of which I was actually over 600 miles away. That dear old man took the letters without a word, went straight back to the ranch and prepared to follow me into what was much of it quite unknown country. He told the other boy, who was also about sixty-five years of age, that he would have to look after everything himself as he was going after the Bwana (master). Being a thrifty old soul, he had by him much stock of dry smoked beef from cows which had died. His preparations were, therefore, almost complete. An inveterate snuff-taker, he had only to grind up a good quantity for the journey and he was ready. Shouldering his Snider and with the packet of letters cunningly guarded against wet, off he set through the wilderness, steering due north. Sleeping by night alone by his camp fire and travelling the whole of the day, he came wandering through what would have been to anyone else hostile tribe after hostile tribe. Countries where if I sent at all I sent at least five guns as escort he came through without trouble. How often he must have been looked upon by the lecherous eyes of would-be bloods as fair game for their spears and as means of gaining the coveted tattoo marks and the blood red ostrich feather. But so sublimely unconscious was he of any feeling of nervousness and so bold and confident his bearing that nothing happened. Being old and wise, he courted the routes which led through the most populous centres instead of dodging along the neutral zones between tribes as a nervous man would have done. Had he done this he would to a certainty have been killed. Wherever he went he slept in the largest village, demanded and got the best of everything, and eventually reached me intact. It was a splendid effort. He walked into camp as if he had left it five minutes before, and he still had smoked beef and snuff when he arrived. The dear old hoarder had lived to some purpose on the natives as he passed through. He arrived, if you please, escorted by a number of Karamojan big-men, this dingy and, I have to say it, very dirty old man. The letters, alas! proved to be most uninteresting in themselves, but, nevertheless, they formed a link with civilisation. They were chiefly bills from unscrupulous Coast merchants being rendered for the third and fourth time although already paid at least once.

The newspapers were, of course, very old, but produced an extraordinary feeling of uneasiness or disquietude. Leading the life I then was, with its freedom from financial care—money was valueless and never handled—from responsibility—there was no law in the land except that of force—it had rather the effect of a sudden chill to read of strikes, famines, railway accidents, unemployment, lawsuits, and the other thousand and one unhappinesses usually contained in newspapers. Although I read them, every word, including the advertisements—here again remedies for ills—I felt distinctly perturbed for two or three days after. The happiest literature I ever had in the bush was “Pickwick Papers,” and the happiest newspaper the dear old Field.

III.—The Coming of Pyjalé

From Mani-Mani we moved on to Bukora, another section of Karamojans. I was warned by the Swahilis that Bukora was a very bad country. The people were very rich in cattle and correspondingly insolent. Everyone who passed through Bukora had trouble. Either stock was stolen or porters murdered.

I cannot say that I believed all this, or perhaps I would not have been so ready to go there. But that there was some truth in their statements I soon found. In fact, there were moments when it was touch and go. Looking back on it calmly I can see that nothing but chance luck saved us. It was thus: We pushed our way smartly right into the middle of Bukora, intending to camp near some large village. But to our disappointment the catchments of water were nearly dry. What remained in them was merely mud. We were obliged therefore to move on to some wells on the outskirts of the villages. This is always a bad place to be attacked in. Natives are much more willing to attack people outside than when they are right in their midst. When you are close alongside a village and there is any question of hostilities, the people of that particular village feel that they will probably come in for more than their share of the trouble when it begins. They have their goods and chattels there, their corn, cows, babies, fowls, etc. For these reasons they are against hostilities. Another advantage to the travellers when close to stockaded villages—as these were—is that such a village can be rushed and then held against the rest of the tribe.

THAT LUNATIC PYJALÉ SPEARS AN ELEPHANT AND MAKES TROUBLE FOR EVERYONE.

However, I was young and without much thought of anything in those days, and camp by the wells I would. We accordingly did so. And presently the camp began to fill with apparently friendly natives. They dropped in by twos and threes and stood around, each man with two spears. I thought they seemed a nice friendly, sociable crowd, and took little further heed of them. Then comes my headman, a Swahili, to me. “Bwana, there is no good brewing. These people mean trouble. Look around, do you see a single woman anywhere?” I laughed and asked him what he thought they would do. He said that at a given pre-arranged signal they would start spearing everyone. And then it dawned on me how absurdly easy it would be for them to do so. When you came to look around with this thought in your mind it became apparent that every man was being marked by several spear-men. If he moved they also lounged about until they were again close to him. I must say they appeared to me to act the indifference part very well. When I had convinced myself that something of this nature really was afoot, I naturally got close to my shooting irons, ready to take a hand when the fun started. In those days I always wore fifty rounds in my belt.

Now I thought that if I could only supply something sufficiently distracting the affair might never begin. There over the plains were plenty of game. I took my rifle and got the interpreter to tell the Karamojans to come as I was going killing meat. They came at once in fair numbers. They had already heard of my wonderful rifles, and wherever I went I always had an audience eager to see them or the Bom-bom (Mauser pistol) at work.

Hardly had we gone a few hundred yards, and while we were still in full view of the camp, when a herd of zebra came galloping across our front. They had been alarmed by some abnormal movement of natives and had somehow got mixed up and lost.

They came well spaced apart and just right for my purpose. I shot one after the other as hard as I could fire. I was using a 10 shot ·303, and when I had fired the ten shots the survivors of the herd were too far off. I was careful not to reload in the ordinary way, for I carried another charged magazine. Consequently the natives thought I might have any number of shots left in this quite new and terrifying weapon. No smoke and such a rapid fire of death—they had never seen the like. Bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! they kept saying to themselves, only much more rapidly than the actual rate of fire. And the zebras, strong brutes, knocked right down one after the other. No! this was something new. They had better be careful about fooling around with this red man. He was different from those red men among the Swahilis, who used to fire great clouds of smoke and hit nothing.

After an episode of this kind one feels somehow that a complete mental transformation has taken place. One is established right above these, in some ways, finer but less scientific people. But this knowledge comes to both at the same time. I now ordered these previously truculent, now almost servile, savages to flay, cut up and carry to camp every bit of meat and skin. When I saw anyone sneaking a bit of fat or what-not I blackguarded him soundly. I rushed the whole regiment back to camp loaded with several tons of meat, many of them forgetting their spears in their hurry. But had I ventured to bullyrag them like this before the zebra incident I would have had a spear thrust for answer and right quickly too.

I now began to push enquiries about elephant, but with no great success at first. One day a Bukora boy came to camp and while in conversation with some of my people casually told them that he had recently returned from no man’s land, where he and some friends of his had been looking for Kumamma. The Kumamma were their neighbours to the west. They had been looking for them in order to spear them, should things be right—that meaning should the enemy be in sufficiently small force for them to easily overcome. When the numbers are at all equal, both sides retire smartly to the rear. This is the normal kind of state in which these tribes live. It leads to a few deaths certainly, but it keeps the young men fit and out of other mischief. Every young man goes looking for blood frequently, and as they carry no food except a few handfuls of unground millet simply soaked in water, and as they never dare to sleep while in the neutral zone, it acts as a kind of field training.

This youth, then, had seen no Kumamma but had seen elephant. My boys told me this and I tried to get the lad to go with us to hunt. He said he would come back and let me know. He did so and brought a friend. This friend of his was a most remarkable-looking man. Strange as it may seem, he had a most intellectual head. He was a man of perhaps thirty-five years of age, most beautifully made and tattooed for men victims only, I was relieved to see. Pyjalé was his name, and now began a firm and long friendship between this distinguished savage and myself. I cannot say that I have ever had the same feelings for any man as I came to have for Pyjalé. He was, I found, a thorough man, courageous, quiet, modest, with a horror of humbug and untiring in our common pact, the pursuit of elephant. He was with me during the greater part of my time in Karamojo, and although surrounded by people who clothed themselves, never would he wear a rag even. Nor would he sleep comfortably as we did on grass and blankets. The bare hard ground out by the camp fire with a hole dug for his hip bone and his little wooden pillow had been good enough for him before and was good enough now. No one poked fun at Pyjalé for his nakedness; he was the kind who do not get fun poked at them.

Pyjalé was game to show us elephants, but said we would have to travel far. His intelligence was at once apparent by his saying that we ought to take tents as the rains might come any day. He was right, for come they did while we were hunting.

I took to Pyjalé right at the start and asked him what I should do about the main safari. He said I could leave it where it was; no one would interfere with it. If I liked I could leave the ivory in one of the villages. This I gathered was equivalent to putting one’s silver in the bank at home. And so it is, bizarre as it may seem. You may leave anything with natives—ivory, beads, which are money, trade goods, stock, anything—and not one thing will they take provided you place it in their care. But if you leave your own people to look after it they will steal it, given the chance.

Thinking that it might save trouble I put all my trade goods and ivory in a village, and leaving the safari with plenty of rations, I left for a few days’ hunting, taking a sufficient number of porters to bring home any ivory we were likely to get. This was necessary at this time as the natives did not yet follow me in hundreds wherever I went, as they did later on.

We trekked hard for three days and came once more in sight of the Debasien range, but on its other side. On the night of the third day the rains burst upon us. The light calico bush tents were hastily erected in a perfect gale and downpour. Even Pyjalé had to shelter.

In the morning Pyjalé said we were certain to see elephant if we could only cross a river which lay ahead of us. When we reached its banks it was a raging torrent, red with mud and covered with patches of white froth. There was nothing for it but to camp and wait until the spate subsided.

While this was being done I saw a snake being carried down by the swollen river. Then I saw another and another. Evidently banks were being washed away somewhere.

A boy pointed to my shorts and said that a doodoo (insect) had crawled up the inside of one of my legs. Thinking, perhaps, it was a fly, or not thinking at all, perhaps, I slapped my leg hard with open hand and got a most frightful sting, while a huge scorpion dropped half crushed to the ground. But not before he had injected quite sufficient poison into me. “Insect,” indeed! how I cursed that boy. And then, by way of helping me, he said that when people were stung by these big black scorpions—like mine—they always died. He was in a frightful state. And then another fool boy said: “Yes, no one ever recovered from that kind.” I shouted for whisky, for you certainly could feel the poison going through the circulation. I knew that what the boys said was bunkum, but still I drank a lot of whisky. My leg swelled and I could not sleep that night, but I was quite all right next day.

The river had gone down somewhat, so I proposed to cross. No one was very eager to go across with a rope. A rope was necessary, as some of the boys could not swim and the current was running too strong for them to walk across the bottom under water, carrying stones to keep them down, as they usually did.

I carried at that time a Mexican raw hide lariat and thought that this stretched across would do nicely for the boys to haul themselves over by. So I took one end to the other side and made it fast, when the safari began to come over. Once the plunge had been taken I found that more of them could swim than they had led me to believe. Then the inevitable—when raw hide gets wet—happened and the rope parted. As luck would have it there was a boy about mid-stream at the instant. The slippery end slid through his fingers and he went rapidly down-stream. His head kept going under and reappearing I noticed, but thought that, as he had a smile on his face each time he came up, he was another humbug pretending to be unable to swim. His friends, who knew perfectly well that he could not swim a yard, said, of course, not a word. And it was not until he gushed water at the mouth instead of air that I realised he was drowning. I ran down the bank while another boy plunged in at the crossing place. I reached the boy first by a second and we soon had him towing to bank. Black men are good to save, they never seem to realise their close call and do not clutch and try to climb out on you. While towing to the bank I felt something on my head and put up a hand to brush it off. Horrors, a snake! It was merely trying to save itself on anything above water level, but I did not realise this. Whenever I knocked it off it seemed to come again. Luckily we just then reached the bank or in another instant I would have abandoned my drowning porter to save myself from that beastly serpent. It was all very silly, and the snake was nearly at its last gasp, but I did not see the humour at the moment. Needless to say, the boy was perfectly all right in ten minutes after vomiting up a bucket or two of water.

While we were getting ready again for the march we heard elephant. To my inexperienced ear the sound seemed to come from some bush 400 yds. or 500 yds. away. But Pyjalé said, to my astonishment, that they were a long way off and that unless we hurried we should not see them before sundown. As the sun then indicated about one o’clock, I thought he was wrong. But he was not; for it was half an hour from sunset when we saw them, still far away. I remember looking industriously about all those miles expecting momentarily to see elephant, while Pyjalé soaked along ahead of me without a glance aside. The only explanation of this extraordinary sound-carrying that has ever occurred to me is humidity of atmosphere. During the dry season the earth becomes so hot that when the first rains fall much is evaporated in steam and the humidity is remarkable.

Here we were face to face with such a gathering of elephant as I had never dared to dream of even. The whole country was black with them, and what lay beyond them one could not see as the country was dead flat. Some of them were up to their knees in water, and when we reached their tracks the going became very bad. The water was so opaque with mud as to quite hide the huge pot-holes made by the heavy animals. You were in and out the whole time. As we drew nearer I thought that we ought to go decently and quietly, at any rate make some pretence of stalking them, if only out of respect to them. But no, that awful Pyjalé rushed me, splashing and squelching right up to them. He was awfully good, and I began to learn a lot from him. He treated elephant with complete indifference. If he were moved at all, and that was seldom, he would smile.

I was for treating them as dangerous animals, especially when we trod on the heels of small bogged-down calves and their mothers came rushing back at us in the most alarming fashion, but Pyjalé would have none of it. Up to the big bulls would he have me go, even if we had to go under infuriated cows. He made me kill seven before sundown stopped the bloodshed.

With great difficulty we found a spot a little higher than the surrounding country and fairly dry. As usual at these flood times the little island was crawling with ants of every description. How comes it that ants do not drown, although they cannot swim? They appear to be covered with something which repels water.

Scorpions and all kinds of other horrors were there also. One of the boys was bitten and made a fearful fuss all night about it.

I expected to do well on the morrow, but when it came, behold, not an elephant in sight. Such are the surprises of elephant hunting. Yesterday when light failed hundreds upon hundreds in sight and now an empty wilderness.

We had not alarmed them, as I noticed that when a shot was fired only the animals in the vicinity ran and that for a short distance only. There were too many to stampede even had they been familiar with firearms. And the noise was such as to drown the crack of a ·303 almost immediately.

I asked Pyjalé what he thought about it. He said that at the beginning of the rains elephant wandered all over the country. You could never tell where they might be. With water and mud and green food springing up everywhere they were under no necessity to frequent any one district more than another. Pyjalé’s advice was to get the ivory out and take it home, and then he would show me a country where we were certain to get big bulls. Accordingly the boys set about chopping out while I went for a cruise around to make certain there was nothing about.

I saw nothing but ostrich, giraffe and great herds of common and Topi haartebeeste. On crossing some black-cotton soil I noticed that it clung to the boots in a very tiresome way. Each time you lifted a foot, 10 lb. or 15 lb. of sticky mud came with it. At this stage the ground was still dry underneath, only the top few inches being wet. From the big lumps lying about where antelope had passed it was obvious that they had, too, the same trouble as I was having, i.e., mud clinging to the feet.

But on watching Pyjalé it appeared that it did not stick to naked human feet to anything like the same extent. Pyjalé told me, and I afterwards saw it actually done, that it was possible to run down ostrich and the heavy antelope, such as eland, when the ground was in this state.

Returning we found the boys well on with their chopping out. Towards evening we started for home, being much troubled with swollen rivers. Most of the boys walked through the rivers when we could find a place where the current was not too strong. The heavy tusks, of course, kept them on the bottom. But it was a curious sight to see them calmly marching in deeper and deeper until their heads went right under, reappearing again close to the other bank. Of course, the distance they thus traversed was only a few yards, but for fellows who cannot swim it was not bad.

One camp from home (the safari) we slept near some flooded wells. The boys took their tusks to scrub them with sand and water, the better to make an appearance on the morrow when we should rejoin the safari. This is always a source of joy to Wanyamwezi, to carry ivory to the base. When allowed to do so they will spend hours dancing and singing their way into the camp. The women turn out, everybody makes a noise of some kind, from blowing a reed pipe, to trumpeting on a water buck horn or beating a drum or a tin, in fact anything so that it produces noise.

While they were scrubbing the tusks one of these slipped from the boy’s hands into a well. I heard of it and went to see what could be done. To test the depth I tried one of Pyjalé’s 9 ft. spears. No good. Then I tied another to it, but even then I could not touch bottom. Pyjalé said the bottom was very far. Then I looked at one of my boys squatting on the edge of the well. He had been a coast canoe-man shark-fisher—than whom no finer watermen exist—and knew what I meant without a word passing. He tied his cloth between his legs and stripped his upper body. Then jumping into the air he twisted half round and went down head first into the very middle of the well. It seemed ages before his head reappeared. At last it did so, but only for an instant. Down again; apparently he had not found it the first time. After another long wait he came up with the tusk and swimming or treading water. Eager hands clutched the tusk and drew it out, the boy crawled out himself. This particular tusk weighed 65 lb., the length being almost the diameter of the well, so it had to be brought up end on. How he did it I cannot imagine. The water was the colour of pea-soup, and a scrubbed tusk is like a greasy pole to hold. Of course, it would not weigh 65 lb. when submerged, but it was a pretty good effort I thought. I know I would not have gone 20 ft. or 30 ft. down that well for any number of tusks.

These boys have the most extraordinary lungs. I once sent one of them down to disentangle the anchor of a motor launch, which had got foul of something. There were about four fathoms of chain and the boy went down this hand over hand. I only wanted him to clear the anchor, when we would heave it up in the ordinary way. But presently up the chain came the boy and the anchor.

On the morrow we entered Bukora again, with fourteen fine white tusks. We had a great reception at our camp. The natives, too, were rather astonished at our rapid success. Pyjalé stalked along without any show of feeling.

The boys who had stayed behind had nothing to report except the loss of three of our sheep by theft. Now it was essential to nip this kind of thing in the bud. I did nothing that day, merely sending Pyjalé to his home with a handsome present. I knew he would put it round as to the kind of people we were. Natives always exaggerate enormously when back from a scurry in the bush, and his account of our doings would probably have made me blush had I heard it.

Next day when Pyjalé came with a pot of fresh cow’s milk as a present, I asked him if he had heard anything about our sheep. He said no. I asked him to point me out the village which had stolen them. He said they would kill him if he did so. Therefore he knew. I then said that he need not go with me, if only he would indicate it. He said the village with the three tamarind trees was where the thieves lived.

I went over quietly, as if looking for guinea-fowl, in the evening. The village was quite close to our camp. When their stock began to come in I signalled up some boys. We walked up deliberately to the herds, no one taking any great notice of us. I separated out a mob of sheep and goats and we started driving them towards camp, but very quietly and calmly. It is wonderful how imitative Africans are. If you are excited they at once become so. If you are calm and deliberate, so are they.

A more dramatic thing would have been to take the cattle. But these native cattle are not used to boys wearing clothes, as mine did, and we found at Mani-Mani that they became excited and difficult to handle unless they see their black naked owners about. Pyjalé I had carefully left out of this business.

As soon as our object dawned upon the Karamojans there was the usual commotion. Women wha! wha! wha-ed while rushing from the huts with shields; warriors seized these and rushed with prodigious speed directly away from us; while we pushed our two or three hundred hostages slowly along.

Arrived at camp we just managed to squeeze them all into the bullock boma. There were noises all round us now. The boys were uneasy; there is always something in the alarm note when issued by hundreds of human throats. Dark was soon on us and we sat up by the camp fires till fairly late. Nothing happened, as I anticipated. Discretion had won. They hated that little bom-bom so.

What I wanted now was that they should come. I wanted to tell them why I had taken their sheep. No one appeared, but I consoled myself with the thought that they jolly well knew why I had taken them.

Presently there appeared to be great signs of activity in one of the nearer villages. Native men kept coming from all directions. My boys were all eyes for this, to them, impending attack. I thought they must be born fools to try anything of that sort in broad daylight. Night was their best chance.

Pyjalé had been absent, so I hoped that he was at the meeting. Presently he appeared. He said they had had a discussion and had concluded not to attack us. I told him to go straight back and invite them all to come; I wanted to be attacked. And moreover, if my sheep were not instantly brought I would proceed to kill the hostage sheep we held, and that then I would proceed to hunt the thieves.

This acted like magic; I suppose they thought that as I had known the village of the thieves, I also probably knew the actual men themselves. Our sheep were very soon brought and the hostages released.

I took the opportunity when the natives were there to impress upon them that we did not want anything from them. All we wanted was to hunt elephant in peace, but at the same time I hinted that we could be very terrible indeed. I got some of the older men to dry up and sit down, in a friendly way, and we had a good talk together. I now brought out the card to which I owed all my success in killing elephant in Karamojo. I offered a cow as reward for information leading to my killing five or more bull elephant. This was an unheard of reward. There a cow of breeding age is simply priceless. Normally natives never kill or sell she-stock of any kind and cows could only be obtained by successful raiding. Now among Africans there are numbers of young men who just lack the quality which brings success to its lucky owner, just as there are in every community, and to these young men my offer appealed tremendously. That they believed in my promise from the very start was, I thought, a great compliment, not only to me, but to their astuteness in perceiving that there was a difference between white men and Swahilis.

When my offer had gone the rounds the whole country for many miles round was scoured for elephant, with the result that I never could have a day’s rest. Everyone was looking for elephant. But had the reward been trade goods scarcely a soul would have bothered about it.

The first man to come was remarkable looking enough to satisfy anybody. A terrible looking man. A grotesquely hideous face above a very broad and deep chest, all mounted on the spindliest of knock-kneed legs. Chest, arms, shoulders, stomach and back heavily tattooed, denoting much killing. By reputation a terrific fighter, and very wealthy.

At first I thought that he was come to show me elephant. That was his intention, he said, but first he wanted to become my blood-brother. He said he could see that I was a kindred spirit and that we two should be friends. He said he had no friends. How was that? I asked. Pyjalé answered in a whisper that the lion never made friends of jackals and hyenas. And so we became friends. I was not going through the blood-brotherhood business, with its eating of bits of toasted meat smeared with each other’s blood, sawing in two of living dogs or nonsense of that kind. I took his hand and wrung it hard, and had it explained to him that among us that was an extraordinarily potent way of doing it. That seemed to satisfy the old boy, for the act of shaking hands was as strange to him as the act of eating each other’s blood is to us.

He started off then and I said: “What about those elephant?” “Wait,” was the answer, and off he went, to return shortly with a fat bullock. And then I found that my friend was the wealthiest cattle owner anywhere about—a kind of multi-millionaire. I thought to myself, well, he will not look for elephant. Nor did he; but he had sons without number, being much married, whom he scattered far and wide to look for them. He had arranged the thing most perfectly. We went with food for a few days and returned laden with ivory. Besides which we had some of the jolliest nights in the bush.

LONGELLY-NYMUNG, THE AUTHOR’S BLOOD BROTHER.

One of the best spear-fighters and therefore wealthy in cattle. He was an exceptional man, would accept no gifts, but took Mr. Bell’s native name and also called his male children by it.

THE RETURN OF THE SAFARI.

This great man being now my friend, our troubles were at an end. Wherever we went we were followed by scores of the young unmarried girls and one old maid—the only one I have come across in Karamojo. She was so outstandingly above the average in good looks, so beautifully made and so obviously still quite young, that I often asked why she should remain a spinster. They told me that no man would marry her because she was so beautiful. But why should that be a bar? we white men like our wives to be beautiful. They thought this strange, even for white men. They said they never married very beautiful women as all men wanted them. They also gave as another reason that these very attractive women wanted all men. And I must say that our camp beauty gave decided colour to this latter statement.

No sooner were we arrived back with our imposing line of beautiful tusks than other natives clamoured to take us to elephant. They wanted me to go there and then, but I needed a rest.

In the evening I presented my friend with a heifer, when to my astonishment he refused it. He said he wanted nothing from his friend. I was rather suspicious about this at first, but I need not have been, as I subsequently found this man to be thoroughly genuine. I am convinced that he would have given me anything. It is a big affair in their lives, this blood-brotherhood. Apparently we now owned everything in common. He offered me any of his daughters in marriage, and, thank goodness, never asked me for my rifle. From now on he followed me about like a faithful dog, some of his young wives attending to his commissariat arrangements wherever he was. He even took my name, which was Longelly-nymung or Red Man. And he began now to call his young male children, of whom he was very fond, by the same name. He was a delightfully simple fellow at heart and as courageous as a lion, as I had proof later.

After a few more journeys to the bush lasting from four to ten days, I found suddenly that I had as much ivory as I could possibly move. And this, while still on the fringe of Karamojo. I decided to return to Mumias, sell my ivory, fit out a real good expedition capable of moving several tons of ivory, and return to Karamojo fitted out for several years in the bush.

VI
DABOSSA

Having now the wherewithal to fit out a real good safari from the sale of my ivory, I proceeded to discharge my Baganda porters and to engage in their place Wanyamweze. Bagandas being banana-eaters had shown themselves to be good lads enough, but poor “doers” on ground millet, flour and elephant meat. Dysentery was their trouble. Whereas Wanyamweze seemed capable of keeping their condition indefinitely under severe safari conditions. All my former boys had a good pay-day coming to them, as, of course, they had been unable to spend anything while in Karamojo. Consequently they one and all went on the burst. A few new clothes from the Indian shops and the rest on native beer was the rule. When drinking largely of native beer no other food is required as the whole grain is contained in it. My two Nandi cowherds spent hardly anything of their wages. The only things I ever saw them buy were a fat sheep and two tins of sweet condensed milk. They rendered down about two quarts of fat from the tail of the sheep, poured in the contents of the milk tins, stirred it well and drank it off.

This time bullocks were not employed, donkeys taking their place. It was in connection with the buying of these donkeys that a remarkable feat of foot-travelling came to my notice. A trader wished to sell to me some donkeys—probably raided—which he had left at Mani-Mani, about 150 miles away. He offered a Karamojan a cow as reward for bringing them down in time for me to buy, and the boy had them there at the end of the fourth day. As nearly as I could ascertain he had covered 300 miles in 100 hours.

We crossed the Turkwell about 102 strong, this number not including women and camp followers. At Mani-Mani and Bukora some of our cows were exchanged for sheep, goats and donkeys. A decent cow would bring sixty sheep or goats. A donkey was the equivalent of ten sheep or goats. Having now so many mouths to feed it was necessary to buy many donkeys. I raised our donkey strength to 160. This meant that I could have constantly loaded about eighty. They were chiefly employed in carrying grain to our base camp in Dodose, sometimes from Mt. Elgon, where banana flour could be got, over 200 miles away, or from the country near the Nile, 150 to 200 miles distant. Throughout all this trekking, with two donkeys to one saddle, they never had a sore back.

On our arrival at Mani-Mani we found the Swahili village almost deserted. Everyone was out on a raid. They had reckoned that no one in their senses would return to the wilderness so soon as I had. They could not conceive how I had spent the proceeds of all that ivory in so short a time. I learnt that they were out against the Dabossans in whose country I meant to hunt. I therefore laid out my route so as to intercept the returning raiders.

Passing through Bukora we were greeted as old friends, a very different reception from our first. Pyjalé immediately joined up, and after taking a few good bull elephants from the Bukora-Kumamma neutral zone we trekked leisurely and heavily laden northwards.

At the last village of Bukora we met commotion and wailing. The occasion was the murder of three young Bukora girls of marriageable age at the hands of some roving band of Jiwé bloods. These affairs were of quite common occurrence, and the natives could never understand the disgust and abhorrence they drew from me. I was eventually able to stop the killing of females, at least while I was in the country.

Pitching camp late one night in the fighting zone between Bukora and Jiwé, lions were sighted leaving the rocky hills for the game-covered plains. Although almost dark I succeeded in killing two within a short distance of camp. I returned and was seated by the camp-fire when I heard alarming shouts from the direction of the dead lions. In this kind of life something is constantly turning up, and one soon learns to be always ready. The occurrences are so simple as to require but simple remedies. Everything seems to demand the presence of a rifle and just an ordinary sense of humour to transform an imminent tragedy into African comedy. Seizing my ·275 I rushed through the darkness towards the shouts, and what I found was that one lion had been skinned and the other half flayed when it had suddenly come to life again. The boys said that as they were removing its skin it suddenly and without warning stood up, opened its mouth and rushed at them. But what I found was a half-skinned lion with its head alive but the rest of it dead or paralysed. It could open its mouth and growl ferociously. Its springing at them must have been supplied by the boys’ imaginations or to excuse their headlong flight. Some nerve must have suffered damage in the lion’s neck, leaving the body paralysed but the head active. One of the boys had been seated on it when it growled, and his account of the affair in camp raised bursts of deep-chested Nyamwezi laughter.

These camps in the wonderful African nights of the dry season linger in my memory as the most enjoyable I have ever experienced. Other nights have been more exciting and more exhilarating, but also more harmful in their after-effects. Poker or flying by night, sitting up for elephant or lion, provide quicker pulse-beats between periods of intense boredom, but for level quiet enjoyment give me the camp-chair by the camp-fire with a crowd of happy and contented natives about and the prospect of good hunting in front and the evidence of good hunting by your side. Looking back on my safaris I can discern that they were quite exceptionally happy little collections of human beings. For one reason, health was simply splendid. Everyone was well and amply tented. All slept warm and dry. Mosquitoes were rare and stomachs full. Fun was of poor calibre, perhaps, but high animal spirits were there to make the most of it. The boys had their women—wives they called them. Tobacco could be traded from the natives or bought at cost price from the safari slop-chest.

Fighting among the men was always settled in the ring and with 4 oz. gloves provided by me. When this was found too slow—and they sometimes pounded each other for an hour on end, rounds being washed out—sticks were provided and the thing brought to a head more rapidly with the letting of a little blood. When the women bickered too persistently a ring would be formed, permission got and the two naggers dragged in. Each would then hitch up short her cloth about her ample hips and, after being provided with a hippo-hide whip, at it they would go with fire almost equal to that of the men. But with this difference. Where the men used their heads and tried to prevent the other from injuring them, the women waited motionless and guardless for each other’s strokes. It was the most extraordinary form of fighting ever seen. A. would catch B. a stinging swinger on the back and stand waiting for B. to give her a frightful cut across the shoulders. And so on it would go—szwip! szwop!—for about ten minutes, when B. would suddenly cast her whip on the ground and flee, A. in hot pursuit, while shouts of laughter greeted the decision, especially strong when either combatant lost her last shred of cloth. I must say the women never bore malice and were always great friends afterwards. Even during the fighting they never showed vice, for they could as easily as not have cut the eye out of their unguarded opponent. Yet I never saw anything approaching an injury inflicted in these affairs.

Then in the evenings there was football. When I first introduced this game I tried to teach them rugger. They were born rugger players. Fast, bare-footed, hard, muscular and slippery, they cared not at all for the ant-heaps, boulders, or thorn bushes which littered their day’s playground. After carrying a hundredweight all day, pitching camp, building thorn bomas for the animals and bringing in firewood for the night, they would go to rugger until dark. So bad were some of the injuries sustained, owing to the bad terrain, that a new game had to be evolved more suited to the ground. After various trials a game was settled upon which seemed to suit. It was simply a kind of massed rush in which any number could engage. Goals were marked out at distances one from the other to suit the ground. Then the ball was placed at half-way and the two opposing sides drawn up in line about 15 yds. from it. At a signal both sides charged full tilt at each other, meeting about where the ball was. Then the object was to get the ball by hook or by crook to the goal. No off-side, no boundaries, no penalties, no referee and no half-time. Darkness terminated the game. So hard was the ground and so incessant the wear on the ball that it was seldom one lasted a month. How they could kick it without breaking their toes always puzzled me.

Our reputation had preceded us, and we were welcomed by the Jiwé people. So much so that they wished for blood-brotherhood, but I evaded it. We hunted happily in their country for some time and learnt of an attack on their country by a Nile tribe with numerous guns of muzzle-loading type. The Jiwé with spears alone had not only repulsed the attackers but had massacred most of them. Inadequate supplies of munitions had been their downfall. The firearms which had been picked up by the Jiwé had since been traded off to Swahilis.

While chasing elephant in the Jiwé country one day we happened to start some ostrich running. They took the same line as the fleeing elephant and soon overhauled them. When close up the cock bird suddenly began the fantastic dashes here and there usually seen in the breeding season. One of his speed efforts took him close past a lumbering bull elephant on the outside of the little herd. These elephants had already been severely chased and several of their number had been killed. When, therefore, the black form of the ostrich raced up from behind him the poor old elephant nearly fell over with fright. His trunk shot out and his ears looked like umbrellas turned inside out by a sudden gust. But recovering almost instantly, he settled back to his steady fast retreat.

Our next country northwards was Dodose, where I proposed to establish the base camp. On entering it we found it high-lying country among steep little granite hills. We were well received and soon became friendly. Some wonderful elephant country was reached from Dodose, and it was here that I got my heaviest ivory. Buffalo were also very numerous. It was beautiful hunting country, as elephant could frequently be found, with glasses, from one of the numerous hills.

It was now the dry season; there was, for that reason, only one route to or from Dabossa, where the Swahili raid was on. I therefore put a look-out post on this route to bring me news of anyone coming south on this trail. This post consisted of four of my best Wanyamweze boys with two natives. As soon as any sign of the returning raiders was seen the boys were to send a native with the news while they remained to try to keep any Swahilis until my arrival. I had expected the raiders to have a fore-guard of some sort and that I would have time to arrive on the scene between its arrival and the coming of the main body. Instead of this, up marched the whole body of raiders, cattle and captives, all in charge of my four stalwarts. What they had told the Swahilis lay in store for them I never learnt, but it was evidently something dreadful, judging by the state of panic they were in. I counted their guns and took their captives—all women—and cattle from them, warned them that next time they would land up in prison or be shot, and sent them packing.

After a considerable hunt in and around Dodose, it was now time, the first rains being imminent, to be moving northwards towards Dabossa. In entering new country for elephant it is always best to get there when the first rains are on, as the animals then desert their dry-season thick haunts for the open country.

“THE ELEPHANT NEARLY FELL OVER WITH FRIGHT: HIS TRUNK SHOT OUT, HIS EARS LOOKED LIKE UMBRELLAS TURNED INSIDE OUT.”

WATCHING THE NORTHERN TRAIL FOR THE RETURNING RAIDERS.

Before approaching the inhabited part of Dabossa I knew that it would be necessary somehow to get into communication with the natives. They had just recently been raided and would be very nervous and likely to attack any strangers approaching their country. The Dabossan cattle recently taken from the raiders were therefore placed in the charge of some of the Dodose notables, while I and a good little safari headed northwards, taking with us all the captive women.

When still about forty miles from Dabossa it became evident from signs that Dabossans were about. We therefore camped by water and built a strong thorn boma. Everyone was warned not to leave the boma at night, but one of my personal boys—a brainless Kavirondo—thinking perhaps that orders were not meant for him, broke camp and was promptly speared. His cries effectually roused the camp, but the extent of his hurt bore little resemblance to the volume of his noise. He had a nice little spear thrust in a tender spot.

The boy’s misfortune was promptly turned to account, for, after stilling his cries, we got the Dabossan captives to shout into the night all our news. Our reason for being there, our intentions, how we had their cattle ready to return to their owners—so far had the narrative got when first one voice from the dark and then others began asking for news of such and such a cow or heifer, so-and-so’s bull or bullock. Later women or girl captives were asked after. Eventually men appeared and were persuaded to come to camp. Relations became friendly almost at once. At daybreak it was arranged for some of the natives to go at once to Dabossa and spread the news, while others accompanied some of my boys back to Dodose in order to identify their cattle. This was thought necessary as we did not know the cattle from any others, and also because it was almost certain that the Dodose notables would try to palm off their duds in place of the good Dabossan animals. Meanwhile I remained hunting the surrounding country.

In a few days there arrived a runner from Dodose with the news that my Dodose notables had held a meeting and, courage brewed by numbers and beer, had flatly refused to give up the Dabossan cattle left in their charge. Not knowing my native gentlemen quite as well as I ought to have, and that courage so rapidly got was as rapidly lost, I was on the point of rushing back to Dodose when another runner arrived saying that all was well and that notable after notable had singly and surreptitiously returned the full tally of cattle left with him. I was relieved to hear this, as these constant native palavers were taking up a great deal of my hunting time.

The cattle soon arrived, drank up our small pool of water, and we pushed off all together for Dabossa. The captive women were now, of course, quite free to go or stay and, without exception, they remained with us in idleness until removed by their men folk on our arrival in Dabossa. Had I allowed it, most of them would have remained as “wives” to my men rather than go back to the heavy work of tilling in their home gardens.

We had a huge reception in Dabossa. There must have been close on 5,000 spears assembled in the huge open space where we camped. Pow-wows were the order of one long weary day when the cattle were handed over and the captives returned to their relations. Peace for us at any rate was assured, but when I told the Dabossans that no one would attack them and that they ought to trade peacefully, they swore they would massacre every Swahili who might venture near their country. After I had explained my wish to hunt elephant, an old woman got up and made a long speech to the effect that they owed everything to me and that they ought to give me a pair of tusks. This they did, not particularly large ones. But what was better than tusks was guides to the Murua Akipi (Mountain of Water) country, said to abound in elephant.

This Murua Akipi was the aim of my journey. I had heard of it from native sources. It was a wonderful country where anything might happen. Huge elephant lived there. Bad Abyssinians came there. Elephant cemeteries were to be found there. Water which killed whoever drank it was there and which looked so cold and clear. No white man had ever seen it, although every traveller was supposed to be trying to reach it for the mysterious “thahabu” (gold) it contained. In fact, if one asked for anything under the sun anywhere within a radius of one hundred miles he would be referred to that mysterious blue peak, Murua Akipi.

We trailed along through monotonous cultivated country for several days. Then coming to the end of Dabossa we entered on an exceptionally large deserted zone. Here hardly anyone ventured, as Habashi (Abyssinian) prowlers might be met. For several days the large open cotton-soil plains, with bands of thorn bush, were covered with great numbers of ostrich and topi haartebeeste. Abyssinians had recently raided the outskirts of Dabossa and all the boys were rather nervous, having heard dreadful tales of the Habashi.

We were not long in coming on signs of Habashi methods. Away over the plains some small black objects were seen. Zeiss showed them to be people, apparently women, seated on the ground. At closer range there were seven of them, all young women. Closer still, they appeared to be bound in a sitting posture, and all were in a very bad state. For one thing, their tongues all protruded and were black and fly covered. This was thirst. Their arms were passed inside the knee and were lashed securely to the outside of the ankle, and so used they were abandoned in this shameless fashion to rescue on the one hand or death from thirst on the other.

Having water with us we soon released them and gradually forced sufficient moisture between tongue and teeth. Contrasted with those dreadful tongues how perfectly beautiful primitive man’s teeth appeared. Small, regular and widely set apart from each other, nothing seems to tarnish their whiteness.

These hardy creatures soon recovered sufficiently to stand up, and we packed each on a donkey to our next camp, where sufficient water for all was got. The next day we sent them off to their homes, feeling pretty certain there could be no Abyssinians between us and Dabossa, as water was still scarce.

We now sighted Murua Akipi as a minute tooth of pale blue just cutting the horizon. I thought we would reach it in two days, but it required four days of long marching to reach a small kopje a few miles from its base. That tiny tooth grew larger and larger each day until it looked an enormous size. I daresay it is not more than 2,000 or 3,000 ft., but being surrounded by huge plains it shows to great advantage.

One day while crossing the plains we had a smart shower which turned the black powdery soil into very tenacious mud. Walking became a trial for anything but naked feet, and I asked Pyjalé if the conditions were right for running down antelope. He assured me they were, and I urged him and the Dabossans to try it when opportunity arose. This was not long, for as we came out of a thorn belt we surprised a herd of eland and topi. Off went Pyjalé and the Dabossans, taking off their spear-guards as they ran. Off went the antelope, too, and for some time Pyjalé and Co. lost ground. Through my glasses I could see that the eland threw up much more mud than the topi and the topi much more than the natives. These latter hardly ever lifted a clod, whereas the galloping eland hove great masses into the air at every lurch. Consummate runners as all the natives were, Pyjalé was easily best. He could probably have closed with his beast sooner than he did but for his running it in a circle for my benefit. The heavy and fat eland were soon blown, and Pyjalé presently ranged alongside and with a neat and lightning dart of his spear thrust it to the heart. The movement was barely perceptible through the glass.

While on the subject of native runners I would like to tell what took place at Kampala, the capital of Uganda, in the year when Dorando won the marathon in England. Everyone was marathon mad, and the fever spread to Uganda. A marathon for native runners was organised as part of the attractions of the Show. Native chiefs were warned to seek out and train any likely talent they might have. The training consisted of feeding the runners largely on beef.

The course was from Enteble to Kampala show ground with one complete circuit of the ground. The course was carefully marked and two whites on bicycles were told off to ride with the runners. The distance, I believe, was almost exactly the same as the English course. About thirty runners started in the hottest part of the day, experienced heavy rain en route, which turned the road to mud and washed out the bicycles, and thirty runners arrived together at the show ground, tore round the ground singing and leaping in the air, fresh as paint, completed the course still all together, and went on circling the ground, thinking they were giving their lady friends a treat I suppose. They had to be stopped eventually, but the most astonishing thing was that their time for the course was almost exactly Dorando’s time, if I remember rightly. They thought it was better fun to come in all together than by ones and twos.

Camp was pitched at the foot of the kopje, sufficient rain water being found in the elephant baths for all our requirements. The next morning I climbed the little hill in pouring rain. From its top I had a good view of the Murua to the south, while to the north a river was visible flowing northwards. On its banks were large verdant green flats which might have been as smooth as tennis lawns but for the fact that they were thickly speckled with black dots which the glasses and then the telescope showed to be the backs and heads of scores of bull elephant. The grass consequently was young swamp grass and about six or seven feet high. The big tripod telescope showed some wonderful ivory, and I have never seen before or since so many old bull elephant in one place. Bunches of young herd bulls were comparatively common, but here were numbers of aged bulls.

Knowing how all naked men hate rain, I left Pyjalé in camp and took instead a well-clad boy whose feet had worn off earlier in the journey, and who had since been recuperating at the base camp. Nothing takes condition off a naked African like heavy rain. Strong as their constitutions are they wilt when constantly wet once the natural oil of the skin is pierced.

Striking straight for the swamps through the thorny flats we came out of some very dense wait-a-bit almost under the trunk of a single old monster. I thought of trying a shot up through the palate for the brain, but wisely refrained and withdrew quickly a few paces while the old bull stared straight at us, still unsuspicious, and affording an easy frontal shot.

Passing on, we were presently on the edge of the green swamp. And now how different the smooth-looking lawn appeared; huge broad-leaved grass, still young, but seven or eight feet high in places. While all the dry country was still parched after the long dry season, here on this rich flood-land the grass had two or three months’ start. Hence the numbers of elephant. But why only bulls? That is known to them only. I had a grand day among them in spite of the grass. Soaked to the skin, the temperature just suited the white man, and I returned washed out but happy to a comfortable tent, hot bath, dry towels and pyjamas, food ready and good enough for keen appetite and the best of service. Off with wet and mud-covered things, dump them on the ground-sheet; good boys are there ready to pick them up, wash them and dry them by the huge camp-fire. Fresh clothes every day—what real solid comfort one has in the bush! No laundry bills to face and no clothes to be careful of. Creases in the trousers not required below the knee, and the harder the usage the softer the wear. Having tasted Heaven already I think I must be booked for the other place. Ten good tails was the count for the day.

Mounting Look-out Hill next morning, no elephant was visible, so off went the cutting-out gang with their axes, etc., and my yesterday’s companion as guide to the slain. In the evening they returned with some magnificent ivory, but having found only nine carcases. Having the tails of ten, I thought they had failed to find the tenth, and I turned in, meaning to show them it on the morrow. I remembered now on looking at the ivory that the missing animal had exceptionally long tusks. I had measured them with my forearm, and three and a half lengths had they protruded from the lip. Resolved to find him, we searched the whole area of that swamp, but nowhere could he be found. At last I came to the spot from which I had fired, as I supposed, the fatal shot. After a little search I found the empty ·275 case. There a few yards away should have been the elephant. Here was where he lay on his side; grass flattened, mark of under tusk in mud, all complete. But no elephant could be found. It was a case of stun and nothing else. And there on those plains there probably wanders to this day an elephant distinguished from other tailless elephants by having had his tail painlessly amputated by human hand and Sheffield cutlery while under the influence of a unique anæsthetic. Meanwhile I had lost two grand tusks. One of the other bulls had a single tooth only, but almost made up for this fraudulent shortage by weighing in 134 lb. for his single tooth. The weight for the nine bulls was 1,463 lb., all first-rate stuff, and the value then in London somewhere about £877.

After some fairly successful hunting in the neighbourhood it was time to move on to the wonderful mountain. Its wonder had somewhat eased off by our close contact. Indeed, it now appeared as just an ordinary-looking African hill, extremely sterile and forbidding-looking. Although from a distance it had appeared as an isolated peak, on closer acquaintance there were seen to be not a few foot-hills of insignificant height. It was on the spur of one of these that we met with Abyssinians. As we headed across the plains men were seen scuttling up the rocks, and my glasses showed mules tethered some way up. We were therefore about to encounter our first Abyssinians. Everyone was in a twitter. Habashi have a truly awful reputation for nameless atrocities in those parts, and had it lain with them my safari would have chosen instant flight rather than come within rifle-shot of those mounted terrors. For my part, I felt tolerably all right, as the glasses showed no sign of the enemy being in any force. And then I thought that if I were in their place and saw a safari of our size marching resolutely towards me I should feel pretty anxious. This thought comforted me to such an extent that I did a foolish thing. I was at that time trying to get a really good pair of oryx horns, and when almost under the noses of the Abyssinians lying in the rocks up got a good oryx and I let drive. Too late, the thought that the enemy might think I was firing at them flashed through my mind. I rushed up to the fallen buck and seemed busy with it. As a matter of fact, we subsequently found that the great, fierce, bold Abyssinians were in a much greater funk than we were. We shouted in Arabic that we were friends, and invited them to come down. We tried everything without success, and at last camped peacefully beneath them. As evening was drawing on and they had not yet come I strolled up to the mules without arms in case they might be scared. Then I sat down and smoked, hoping they would join me. But no, all I could see of them was their heads among the rocks. I went slowly towards them, and when I was quite close I found the poor devils were literally shivering. Good Heavens! I thought, what devilment have you been up to, to be in such a state? It was only by sitting down with them in their funk holes and chewing coffee berries which they offered that they could be persuaded to come forth. But at last they came to camp and settled down. It was impossible to talk with them. They knew no Arabic, and we knew no Abyssinian. However, we made out that they were ten days’ ride from their base and were out for elephant. Slaves, in other words, I suspect. They made me a present of a goodish young mule with saddle and bridle complete and a French Daudeter rifle, while I gave them in return a fine tusk. We parted, mutually relieved to see the last of each other.

FROM THE LOOK-OUT HILL.

“The next morning I climbed the little hill in pouring rain. From its top I had a good view of the Murua to the south, while to the north a river was visible flowing northwards. On its banks were large verdant green flats which might have been as smooth as tennis lawns but for the fact that they were thickly speckled with black dots which the glasses and then the telescope showed to be the backs and heads of scores of bull elephants.”

THE “ELEPHANT CEMETERY.”

At the end of a short march across lava-dust plains we reached the wonderful mountain Murua Akipi. Skirting the base of it, we found a fine, well-worn elephant road, which we followed for some miles, until a branch led us up a gully to a little level plain surrounded by rocky lava-strewn hill-slopes of a most forbidding description. For a few yards in the centre of the plain there was some very short and verdant green grass dotted here and there by the white bleached skulls of elephant while half-buried leg bones showed their huge round knuckle ends. In the centre of this green oasis were three pools of intensely clear green water. All round the edges of the grass there were glistening lines of white powder, evidently high-water marks. I tasted the water; it was certainly very bitter.

Here was what native information called an elephant cemetery, and at first sight I thought it was. But on looking round and thinking it over a bit I was first struck by the fact that there were no recent bones or skulls. Again, all the skulls seemed to have undergone about the same amount of weathering. I talked it over with Pyjalé, and he told me that he had heard from the old men who had had it from others that once there came a dreadful drought upon the land; that so scarce had water become that springs of the nature in question were the only ones left running, and that they then became so strong that animals and men drinking of their waters immediately died. Even now as we drank it in a normal season the water was very bitter, although it appeared to have no after-effect beyond acting as a slight aperient. Natron is, I believe, the impregnation. So much for the elephant cemeteries.

Still skirting the base of Murua Akipi on well-worn elephant paths, we next day sighted zebra high up on the mountain side. Halting the safari I went to investigate and found a pool of fresh water, sufficiently large for several days. Here we camped, and from this spot I did the mountain. From its top away to the north-east could be seen a distant line of hills which I took to be Abyssinia. To the N.W. I could trace the course of the river which had afforded such good results in elephant. It meandered away through huge open plains until lost in the distance. I imagine it must flow into the Akobo or Pibor. At the time of which I write the maps were a blank as regards this region.

With my eyes well skinned for gold I washed the gravel in the pot-holes of the stream beds but without result. Soon tiring of this prospecting I began to search the surrounding country for game. With clear atmosphere and good glasses all kinds of game were seen. The dry lava-dust plains were covered with herds of oryx, ostrich, giraffe and gazelle. In the thorn belts elephant were seen. To find game I used prismatic binoculars, and to examine the animals more closely I had a large telescope on a tripod. With this I could almost weigh the tusks of elephant seven or eight miles distant. It was most fascinating to watch the animals through this glass. Sometimes rhino would be seen love-making. The inclination was to spend too much time at the eye-piece. But what dances that glass led me. I would watch two or three heavy old bull elephant feeding slowly about. It looked absurdly easy to go down to the plain and walk straight to them. But this I knew was not so, and I would try to memorise the country which lay between me and the animals. But however I tried it was always most difficult to find them once the flat was reached. Everything altered and looked different.

My hunting round Murua Akipi was so successful that I found my safari already too heavily laden to attempt the following of the north-flowing river. Only in these two particulars—the presence of large elephant and Abyssinians—had the wondermongers been right about Murua Akipi. Gold was not found. The deadly waters were merely natron springs. The elephant cemeteries had been cemeteries during one exceptionally dry season only, or so it seemed.

For a hunter well equipped with food stuffs a hunt of three months’ duration in the country surrounding Murua Akipi would have shown astonishing results. As it was we carried with us flour traded on Mt. Elgon, some 600 miles south of us. Of course everyone was on half rations, that is every boy received a condensed milk tin half filled with banana flour for the one day with the addition of as much elephant meat and fat or buck meat as he cared to take. In addition to this everyone got salt. The condition of all was magnificent. My food was arranged for in the following manner. There were four milk cows constantly in milk. As they went dry they were exchanged for others from the native herds. Two of these cows, with their calves, accompanied me wherever I went; while two rested at the base camp in Dodose. Hence I always had milk, the staple of all the native tribes. In time I came to drink it as they did, that is sour. Mixed with raw blood as they took it, I could never master, although it then becomes a perfect food I am convinced. Fresh milk as we drink it at home is regarded by all pastoral tribes in the light of a slow but sure poison. They all declare that the drinking of milk in its fresh state leads to anæmia and loss of power. Under no conditions will they drink it fresh, but will always stand it in a calabash where it soon sours.

My two cows were milked night and morning. The evening milking was put to stand in a calabash and was sour by morning. The calabash was carried by a boy and I drank it about 9 a.m. after marching from about 6 a.m. This I found did me well throughout the day without anything else, and no matter how hard the travelling. It seemed a perfect food. One did not get thirsty as after a meat meal, neither did one become soon hungry as after a farinaceous meal. Meanwhile that morning’s milk was carried in a calabash all day and was “ripe” for the evening’s meal. Then round the camp fire I would frizzle dry buck-meat in the embers.

A boy’s feeding arrangements were as follows: He would wake up about 2 a.m., having slept since about 8 p.m. On his camp fire he would warm up a chunk of smoked elephant or buck meat. This he would not touch until the first halt in the day’s march, generally about 9 a.m. He would then have this first meal, consisting entirely of smoked beef. After that he would perform his hard day’s work. In the evening at sundown his flour, if on half rations, would be made into thin gruel with fat added and a pinch of wild tamarind to “mustard” it. When on full rations thick porridge stiffened off the fire with raw flour would be made, after that more smoked meat. Here again absolutely fresh meat was never eaten, always the smoked or dried meat.

As regards the thirst-resisting qualities of the grain and meat diet as opposed to the milk and meat diet there was no comparison. Pyjalé, who shared my milk, once went three days without either food or drink, whereas a grain-eating boy who became lost was rescued just in time after only thirty-six hours without water.