42 ON SAFARI 



lis a fair-sized crowd of natives — between forty and 

 fifty human beings, Swahili porters, askaris armed with 

 Sniders, hunters, tent-boys, and the usual components 

 of what is called a " safari," or caravan. These we 

 thought would make a useful troop of beaters ; but they 

 hardly viewed the undertaking with the same enthu- 

 siasm. A Swahili has his good points, but he is not a 

 born sportsman, nor is he any longer a true savage. 

 He wears clothes of sorts, drinks when he has a chance, 

 and can reckon up how many rupees go to a sovereign. 

 The true savage, such as the Masai, does none of these 

 things. Any reluctance to act as beaters was, however, 

 soon dispelled by the forceful suasion of our " headman," 

 Maguiar, the huge Soudanese, whose word, backed by 

 the obvious power to enforce it, was law beyond debate ; 

 and after breakfast we set forth amidst deafening din. 

 The regular musical instruments indigenous to Central 

 Africa, such as drums and tom-toms, were supplemented 

 by empty biscuit-tins, gourds filled with pebbles, and 

 other ear-splitting devices quite calculated to alarm even 

 a lion. 



The scene of our proposed operations, less than an 

 hour's walk aw^ay, was a series of forest-patches which lay 

 nestling along the northern shores of Lake Nakuru, a 

 sheet of water some fifteen miles in length. These 

 woods were of no great width, merely belts of a few 

 hundred yards across, and conveniently divided from 

 each other by natural opens at intervals of a mile or 

 two. Inland from the forest-belt was open, grassy land, 

 sloping upwards to low, rocky koppies, clad with what 

 looked like bracken and brambles. The first two beats 

 proved blank, nothing bigger than " grass-antelopes " or 

 dikdiks being seen. In the third beat I was the 

 penultimate gun on the left of the line, facing the lake, 

 the last gun being posted to command the extreme end 

 of that patch of forest on the lake- shore. I had selected 

 for this work my 12-bore Paradox and an old '450 

 Express, to which I was long accustomed, as being 

 better adapted for quick-moving shots at moderate 



