NAIROBI AND MT. KENYA 113 



or range over the opposite heights following up the elephant, and 

 attacking and slaying most of the big antelope. They kill the ele- 

 phant very often by shooting into his legs at close quarters a har- 

 poon with a detachable and strongly poisoned head. The power- 

 ful arrow poison used by the Andorobo and Masai is made from 

 the leaves and branches of AcocantJiera schimperi. The leaves and 

 branches of this small tree are broken up and boiled for about six hours. 

 The liquid is then strained and cleared of the fragments of leaves and 

 bark. They continue to boil the poisoned water until it is thick and 

 viscid, by which time it has a pitch-like appearance. The poison is 

 kept until it is wanted on sheets of bark. After they have finished pre- 

 paring the poison they carefully rub their hands and bodies free from 

 any trace of it with the fleshy, juicy leaves of a kind of sage. 



"The poison is always kept high up on the forks of trees out of 

 the reach of children, and the poisoned arrows are never kept in the 

 people's huts, but are stowed away in branches. When a beast has 

 been shot with these arrows, it dies very quickly. The flesh just around 

 the arrowhead is then cut out and thrown away, but all the rest of the 

 beast is eaten and its blood is drunk. 



"All these peoples use dogs in hunting, and before starting for the 

 chase they are said to give their dogs a drug which makes them fierce. 

 They also catch birds with bird-lime. The Nandi go out in large 

 numbers to hunt, surround a herd of game in a circle, and then ap- 

 proach the animals near enough to kill them with arrows and spears. 



"The people who inhabit the eastern fringe of the plateau develop 

 the fashion of the earring to a considerable extent. They begin when 

 children to pierce a hole in the lobe of the ear through which they first 

 pass a stick of wood the size of a match. This is increased in thickness 

 until they succeed in stretching the lobe in the course of years into a 

 huge loop. It is interesting to know that in some of the old Egyptian 

 accounts of the Land of Punt (which we take to be somewhere near 

 Somaliland, in northeast Africa), they mentioned people with ears that 

 hung down to their shoulders. Obviously they are describing the 

 people of Somaliland as they existed 3,000 or 4,000 years ago. Some 

 of them have a physiognomy rather similar to the Hamitic people of 

 the north, not altogether negroes.'' 



