NZOIA PLATEAU AND ITS TRIBES 225 



collar makes him jump, and holds in its place the noose that 

 is drawn taut by his jumping. To the other end of the raw- 

 hide is fastened a heavy wooden clog which lies hidden in the 

 grass or is covered by sand. We found these traps still set, 

 and I must say they seemed to me the cleverest traps I ever 

 saw. These Karamojo have never, so far as I could learn 

 from them, had the visit of a white man. They knew noth- 

 ing about missionaries and they said with justifiable pride, 

 that diseases the curse of those tribes that had come in con- 

 tact with the white man and the Hindi were unknown. 

 The women wear skin aprons and short cloaks. The men 

 are quite naked. Their skins are very glossy and smooth 

 and black. They wear the hair tightly drawn back and 

 worked into a chignon which affords a very real protection 

 to the head. The clay they use in working up this elaborate 

 head dress seems to be impervious to heavy rain. After 

 a moderate shower you see the Massai head dressing coming 

 sadly to grief, and all their faces and shoulders dabbled and 

 streaked with red runnels of water. While the Karamojo's 

 headgear is no more affected by a downpour than a duck's 

 back. At the nape of the neck they leave a little opening 

 into the chignon, which has a hollow somewhere within it, 

 and in this they carry a snuff box or any small articles on 

 which they place value. 



The evening of the day on which I shot my elephants, and 

 on which the Karamojo had come in, there were tremendous 

 rejoicings in camp. Some of my Wanyamwazi had been 

 with me since May; now it was October and they determined 

 to honour the occasion by getting up a dance, one of their 

 regular dances, the dance of the elephant. I noticed after 

 dinner, as I sat by the fire, that the camp seemed unusually 

 still and that the men were absent from their cooking fire. 

 Suddenly round the back of my tent came a long rank of men 

 dancing with measured prancing step, a green twig on each 

 man's head and another in each hand. With admirable 



