Distributing the Elephant Meat. 67 



I was trying to sleep about 9 p.m., although the smell 

 of the pile of dead elephant was fearfully strong when the 

 wind veered round, when I heard people shouting in the 

 distance. This was Yakobo and my carriers returned with 

 about fifty women to Carry the meat. Most of them had 

 babies, and the row was deafening, but I told my cook to give 

 them a lot of the meat, and I felt rather sorry they could 

 not eat it all up, for the stench was absolutely sickening. 



I managed to get asleep about midnight, but was 

 awakened several times during the night by the loud 

 chattering and the cries of infants, who, being too young 

 to fill up on "high" elephant, were doubtless kept from 

 their usual nourishment by the mothers, who were busy 

 chewing elephant meat. When natives feed the working 

 of their teeth can be heard at some distance, and in the 

 intervals they chatter like monkeys, so it was not what 

 might be called a peaceful night for me. 



I got a lot of the meat away early, and sent men out at 

 earliest dawn to bring in the kudu meat, and by 9 a.m. 

 they had got back to the village. 



After presenting the headman with a lot of meat I 

 started off and reached my home on the Bua River at 

 i o'clock ; and this was pretty quick work for the eighteen 

 miles of rough country that lay between. 



When I got the elephant meat on the stands with big 

 fires underneath, the maggots had a lively time. 



I remarked to Yakobo, my cook, that surely the natives 

 would refuse to eat such meat, but he said that many of them 

 rather liked it with plenty of maggots in it. Personally, 

 though I can stand a good deal in the way of strong meat 

 aromas, it nearly made me sick to get a whiff of it or even 

 to look at it. 



I felt very sorry for the young infants, whom the mothers 

 carry in a cloth or skin on their backs, for the drip, drip 

 from these baskets right on the heads of the children must 

 have been almost too much for such tender specimens of 

 humanity; at least, I thought so, but on my remarking this to 

 the women they only smiled and said it was chabe (nothing). 



F 2 



