ELEPHANT 189 



are many buffalo, but there are many game pits also. 

 They are nearly all armed with sharp stakes. The lower 

 Cherangang N'dorobo will make them, and when the grass 

 is long, they take much meat. But they are very dan- 

 gerous to men as well as game. The lower Cherangang 

 N'dorobo are paying toll still to me, for one of my young 

 men staked in one of them last year. Some years I lose 

 two young men, almost every year I lose one. If the 

 N'dorobo find them dangerous, you would find them much 

 more dangerous. Do not hunt buffalo or elephant there, 

 not at least till the grass is burned." Wise advice, it 

 seemed to us, on which we determined to act. 



H. had an experience two years ago not in the forest, 

 but in the comparatively safe ground outside it which 

 might easily have been fatal. He came on some elephants, 

 and was creeping close to one that stood on the other side 

 of some bush; as he was going to fire, his game moved 

 slowly on and, at a few yards distance he followed, try- 

 ing for a shoulder shot. There was a narrow opening 

 before him, wide enough just to permit the bulky body of 

 the elephant to pass. To his astonishment the great beast, 

 instead of taking the evident path before it, without paus- 

 ing or seeming to make any examination of the ground, 

 deliberately trod, not in the open space, but full in the 

 middle of the dense thorny bush on one side. Thought 

 H. to himself, "What a fool of a beast. I'll cut it off, 

 and get a good shot." He rushed down the narrow clear- 

 ing to do so, and in an instant was crashing down into a 

 ten-foot deep pit, a cocked double .500 rifle in his hands. 

 Had it been staked, he would never have come out alive. 

 As it was, he was badly hurt, and had to wait till his men 

 found him, and dragged him out. In a few years game 

 hunting by the N'dorobo will probably be stopped by 

 government, though it seems a little hard on these brave 

 and independent people, that customs that have been 



