GOOD-BYE SERGOIT 253 



straight to the honey tree." You must be a little patient 

 for it will flutter with seeming aimlessness before you, 

 flying from one tree to another, as though it could not 

 quite trust you to give it a fair share of the sweet spoil. 

 Then it makes up its little mind that it cannot have what 

 it wants without your aid, and flies straight to the tree 

 it has marked. I have followed a bird for many hundred 

 yards. It would wait for me, and while it was waiting, 

 never cease to utter its sharp, chirping cry. Once I was 

 up it would go on again. The whole proceeding always 

 seemed to me very wonderful. 



Mr. Jackson tells me the bird sometimes leads his 

 follower to a leopard or a cerval cat's lair, seemingly 

 wishing to have his enemies killed. 



Hyenas are very numerous all over the Nzoia Plateau. 

 I had an illustration of their extraordinary cunning. We 

 set a trap for some that would keep howling hideously 

 near camp. The accompanying (bad) photograph gives 

 some idea of how it was set. A branch, not seen in the 

 photograph, stretches over the trap. Two short stakes 

 are driven into the ground two or three inches apart. A 

 cord hangs from the bough above and supports the 

 Schneider carbine, which moves easily between them. A 

 crotched stick in front supports the muzzle of the gun. 

 This is cocked and a string passed round the trigger and 

 fixed to the two stakes between which the butt of the rifle 

 hangs. Fasten meat to the muzzle, and a tug at that 

 will drag the gun forward against the string across the 

 trigger, and anything pulling at the meat is shot in the 

 head or chest. 



The trap had not been set a couple of hours the first 

 night before we heard the shot. We went down in the 

 morning and found a young hyena dead. 



That was the last we secured. The trap was set con- 

 stantly and as constantly fired, but never again was any 



