WHAT IS LEARNT FROM SPOOR. 135 



and forwards between the place at which I had first seen them and where I had 

 seen them later, and hardly ever went elsewhere. So if they left one of these 

 localities it required no great brain fatigue to guess that they would have 

 gone to the other. 



A little later I saw a lesser kudu disappear into the bush. Here was some- 

 thing worth taking some trouble over. I asked my hunter where it had gone 

 but he was unable to offer any opinion on the subject, for the lesser kudu does 

 not wander between two places alone. The only thing he could suggest was 

 that we shou'd go back and look at the herd of hartebeest again. When it 

 came to tracking he was perfectly useless and wholly uninterested in the 

 business. This little instance is typical of the native hunter and of the kind of 

 animals usually met with. Game in these parts do not go so far when disturbed as 

 they do in Central Africa, and they nearly always return to the same places 

 during the same seasons. So it cannot be claimed that tracking is of such vital 

 importance in this country as it is elsewhere. If you have with you a native 

 tracker who knows the country thoroughly and the habits of the game of the 

 locality he will be able to do away for you with the lengthy process of tracking. 

 However, to anyone strange to the country, and without the help of a local 

 hunter, the habits and haunts of the game have either to be learnt by experience 

 in the country, or the absence of such knowledge must be supplied by tracking. 



The next thing which surprised me in East Africa was, that hunters pro- 

 fessedly versed in the habits of game were appallingly ignorant of spoor. When 

 a hunter of a hunting tribe called a hyaena's track a leopard's I thought that he 

 must have made some mistake in the Swahili name he used, but since then I 

 have heard many Masai, Kikuyu, Ogieg, and other tribes make mistakes just 

 as bad. This particular mistake you would hardly think it possible for a native 

 to make, especially one who lives amid these animals and sees their spoor 

 constantly. For a hycena's spoor is similar to that of a dog, and a leopard's 

 to that of a cat. The spoor of a hyaena and a cheetah might be confused, 

 but in the case quoted it was manifestly impossible that it could have been the 

 latter, owing to the type of country. 



The disadvantage of having a native hunter, such as is found in this 

 country, is that however good he may be at finding game, he will always take 

 you to the game most easily found, and not necessarily to the game you are 

 most desirous of obtaining. Likewise, in the event of an animal being wounded, 

 the native hunter will be found nearly always useless, as he will want to take 

 you to the herd again or some other lurd. He will not see the object of 



