196 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER CH. 



The close of his childhood may roughly be fixed at 

 the age of ten, when he enters more fully into the 

 life of the village and accompanies his elders on 

 hunting and fishing expeditions, either participating 

 in the sport or assisting as a carrier. Coming to 

 maturity early, as all Africans do, he usually marries 

 between the ages of ten and twelve, and is then 

 admitted into full companionship with his elders. 

 He now sets up house, so to speak, he and his wife 

 building their future home together, There is no 

 necessity to buy furniture on the instalment system, 

 for theirs is actually the simple life. A bed, some 

 mats, calabashes for water, utensils for grinding corn 

 and crushing and cooking food, form all their house- 

 hold goods in fact, you could put the furniture of 

 a whole village into a pantechnicon. From the date 

 of his marriage commences the most arduous portion 

 of his life. He has now to make himself a shamba 

 (garden), so that he may grow the simple necessaries 

 that form his daily bread. There is no question of 

 landlord and tenant to worry him ; he simply marks 

 out the earth that no man owns and clears it for 

 cultivation, and the natural freedom of this act has 

 always presented to my mind a vivid contrast to the 

 trespass laws, the barbed wire and the lordly sense 

 of proprietorship that attach to land in the Old 

 Country. 



After a while, our native may fall in love with 



