230 THROUGH ANGOLA 



that come to water : or other traps, with schemes 

 of snares, or falling logs arranged upon the game 

 paths. If the grass is dry, you may see how 

 villagers will form a ring of fire to drive the smaller 

 beasts into the nets, or on to spears and arrows. 



Later, when your guide has come to trust and 

 like you. and speaks more fully still, he will tell of 

 greater pits dug in days gone by, to capture herds 

 of driven beasts, when the land was full of them, 

 and of traps of great upright posts at either side, 

 and a cross -post upon them, from which hung a 

 broad log-hafted spear, so set on paths as to fall 

 upon the neck or back of the elephant or hippo 

 which walked along them. This gave deep wounds, 

 still further torn when the haft struck the trees 

 under which the terrified beast kept running 

 uruil he died. He might tell of other days when 

 hippos were hunted in the water from canoes, 

 with harpoon-like spears, and floats of ambatch 

 wood which showed where the wounded beast 

 was swimming. 



When he has finished boasting of all this 

 hunting, he may tell you, with a grimace, how one 

 leg of any beast he kills goes to his Chief, and 

 another to the village. If you are passing by a 

 river, and sec a darn across it, with an opening 

 where a cone-shaped trap is fixed to lie in the 

 water, your guide will show you how it serves 

 to catch the fishes which can pass down the 

 narrowing trap, but not out of it ; and when he 

 talks of fishing you will hear how fish are speared 

 or choked by mud stirred up by paddling feet, or 

 poisoned with the herbs which every village uses. 



