ON THE STONY ATHI 227 



this, on Stony Atlii, we pitched camp. Here before 

 each dawn we occupied posts commanding views far and 

 wide over the veld, and eagerly "glassed" every beast 

 that moved in hopes of recognising an approaching lion ; 

 but none appeared. Later we tried " driving " the 

 tinga-tinga — a job our men shied at till promised back- 

 sheesh in event of success. We also pushed through 

 the heavy flags ourselves ; but that was blind work, and 

 in the result never so much as saw a lion. They might 

 still be there, nevertheless, so dense and extensive was 

 the covert. 



It was at this point that, a year or two earlier, our 

 friend Mr. Chalmers Bontein was rather badly mauled 

 by a lion he had wounded and followed into cover. 



One evenino; our men collectino; fire-wood rushed in 

 to report a lion close by. It proved to be a hyena, 

 which animals wailed around the camp every night. 



Meanwhile a double misfortune had overtaken me. 

 From the start it had been clear that my Somali hunter, 

 Said Hassan (whom I had brought from Aden), was a 

 fraud. He was, moreover, an arrogant self-opinionated 

 ass, who created trouble in the safari. A really good 

 Somali is an invaluable assistant in stalking, their 

 trained eyesight holding in view every movement of 

 the game even when in forest or bush. Such was my 

 Elmi Hassan in 1904, and such my brother's present 

 hunter, Ali Yama. On the other hand, Said's sum total 

 of fieldcraft consisted in half-a-dozen monkey tricks. I 

 therefore packed him back to Aden, having had to pay 

 his passage over 4,000 miles on the faith of "chits" 

 (references) that he had never earned. During the rest 

 of this trip I did my hunting alone, employing the 

 Swahili, Mabruki, as gunbearer. 



My experience of Somali hunters is that three out of 

 every four who profess to be shikaris are not worth their 

 " ghee." 



The second trouble was worse — a sheer catastrophe. 

 A brand-new, costly, telescope-sighted rifle, the weapon 

 upon which all my reliance was centred, went to bits 



