TO THE UASIN GISHU 385 



Very rarely did we have to take such long marches as to 

 exhaust our strapping burden-bearers; usually they came 

 into camp in high good-humor, singing and blowing ante- 

 lope horns; and in the evening, after the posho had been 

 distributed, cooked, and eaten, the different groups would 

 gather each around its camp-fire, and the men would chant 

 in unison while the flutes wailed and the buzzing harps 

 twanged. Of course individuals w r ere all the time meeting 

 with accidents or falling sick, especially when they had the 

 chance to gorge themselves on game that we had killed; 

 and then Cuninghame or Tarlton than whom two stancher 

 and pleasanter friends, keener hunters, or better safari 

 managers are not to be found in all Africa would have 

 to add the functions of a doctor to an already multifarious 

 round of duties. Some of the men had to be watched lest 

 they should malinger; others were always complaining of 

 trifles; others never complained at all. Gosho, our excel- 

 lent headman, came in the last category. On this Uasin 

 Gishu trip we noticed him limping one evening; and in- 

 quiry developed the fact that the previous night, while in 

 his tent, he had been bitten by a small poisonous snake. 

 The leg was much swollen, and looked angry and inflamed; 

 but Gosho never so much as mentioned the incident until 

 we questioned him, and in a few days was as well as ever. 

 Heller's chief feeling, by the way, when informed what had 

 happened, was one of indignation because the offending 

 snake, after paying the death penalty, had been thrown 

 away instead of being given to him as a specimen. 



The roans were calving in early November; whereas, 

 when we went thirty miles on, at an elevation a thousand 

 feet less, we at first saw no very young fawns accompany- 

 ing the hartebeests, and no very young foals with the 

 zebras. These hartebeests, which are named after their 

 discoverer, Governor Jackson, are totally different from the 

 hartebeests of the Athi and the Sotik countries, and are 

 larger and finer in every way. One bull I shot weighed, 

 in pieces, four hundred and seventy pounds. No allowance 



