38 CENTRAL AFRICAN GAME AND ITS SPOOR. 



contracts, any animal Inside breaking through is stabbed. The jungle cat is often 

 killed in this way, as it inhabits the grass and open country. 



A row of game pits are often dug in a place where game, such as zebra, are 

 constantly going to or from water. 



Hippos used to be hunted and killed on Lake Nyasa with large barbed harpoons. 

 These were attached to ropes and poisoned. They were thrown at the animals from 

 canoes. The natives attribute their being able to approach close enough to throw 

 these harpoons to the " hunting medicine," a tatoo marking on the right arm at the 

 shoulder and on the back of the right hand. Poisoned spears are also arranged 

 poised in the animals' run, with a trap to drop them on their backs as they pass. 



When out hunting, far from a village, the hunter either builds himself a 

 rough shelter in the fork of a tree or a grass shelter on the ground, with a quantity of 

 poles all round, some yards thick, leaning against it, as a protection against lion. 



He lives luxuriously on the meat he kills and the honey he finds, sometimes 

 bringing a little flour with him from the village. In a sandy bed of water he digs a 

 hole in the sand to get the cooler water which percolates, and where there is nothing 

 but a mud hole to drink from he improvises a filter by laying a quantity of grass on 

 the top of the mud, and, pressing it down, drinks the water which oozes through, 

 and sometimes sucks it up through a straw. 



He is even more full of superstition than the average native. 



He will generally have medicme charms and tattoo marks. Some have medicine 

 against snake bite, which is made by making a row of cuts behind the knuckles of 

 each hand, and rubbing in a powder of certain earth and ashes ; and they will then 

 handle puff adders and other venomous snakes so fearlessly that one is constrained 

 to believe in the efficacy of the medicine. 



There are different curious rites connected with various animals. 



The oldest hunter present carries off an elephant's tusks out of sight, to remove 

 the mass of nerves inside, and none of the others go near the spot afterwards. 



Should a young hunter perform the ceremony, or see it performed, they say he 

 will lose his eyesight. 



Lion, crocodile, and elephant are the animals most superstition is attached to, and 

 every native secretly thinks that at least the two former have extraordinary and super- 

 natural powers connected with witchcraft, about which it is not wise to know too much. 



A knot is always tied in the hairs of the tail of a buffalo when it is killed. 

 Should this not be done, eating the meat will cause diarrhoea. 



The knot having once been tied, it does not matter if the tail is cut off the next 

 moment. 



