HUNTING ELEPHANT AND RIDING LION 163 
swollen that their passage is often impossible. Even in 
dry weather the easy crossings have to be carefully sought 
out. In such cases no hunter can do better than keep his 
sefari on the higher ridges, taking, so far as possible, the 
direction he wants, and attempt no crossing till he comes 
on an old elephant trail. Once one is found a passage 
can be made. ‘Till one is found much time is apt to be 
lost in looking it out. Excepting the Congo country, 
which is closed to all hunters at present, save only to such 
as can, through Belgian court favour, secure a permit, 
no district in Africa holds probably as many elephants. 
The plateau lies between two great fastnesses of theirs — 
the Elgao escarpment on the east and Elgon on the west. 
In either of these they are secure from all approach, unless 
it be the stealthy stalking of some unusually adventurous 
N’dorobo.* <A few elephants are annually killed in this 
way with poisoned harpoons, but they are very few indeed. 
For the white hunters to attempt them in such cover is 
dangerous and useless. A few hours’ struggle with its 
underbrush would quickly convince the most skeptical 
on this point. The great tree trunks break up the air 
currents, and a steady stalking breeze you never get in the 
deep forest, while apart from that, a silent approach is 
out of the question (at least in this forest). But after the 
rains the great beasts seem to have a craving for light and 
air, and the fresher fodder that has sprung up on the green 
veldt, and covered the innumerable thorn trees growing all 
over it. In little bands and great, they stream down from 
the high hills, out over the sunny plain. Sometimes a hun- 
dred or more may be seen together — cows, smaller bulls, 
* N’dorobo literally means wild man. The term is applied to any native who, leaving the tribe for 
a time, or for good, takes to hunting. There are Lumbwa, Nandi, Kikuyu, Massai N’dorobo. But 
the Pukka N’dorobo are a people apart, with districts and language and customs of their own. Their 
chief home and country lies to east of the Nzoia plateau and north of Charangang Mountain. Here, 
amid impenetrable woods and mountains they leave their women and children when they go hunting on 
the plain. Here too they raise their scanty crops of whimby etc., and here are their only kraals. Other 
large settlements of N’dorobo, Newman speaks of. These live to east and west of Kenia. They are 
the same people. 
