HUNTING THE OKAPI 253 



for it is strange that they should have known of its existence. 

 Perhaps the artist who made them had been a great traveller, 

 and these frescoes on the walls constituted his odyssey. 



For their treasures of beads and ornaments, these people 

 make little oval boxes, studding them over with brass- 

 headed nails, which are consequently a valuable article of 

 trade in these parts. 



At intervals along the street of the village there were 

 little shelters of grass protecting their ju-ju, which consisted 

 of numbers of iron rings painted green and threaded on 

 upright sticks. 



We stayed at this place all the next day, for the boats 

 had let in a lot of water during the night, revealing the ugly 

 fact that the bumpings against the rocks had made small 

 splits in the rivets ; so we had to take the boats out of the 

 water and stuff the little cracks with felt and then solder them 

 over. 



During the day we went out hunting and collecting. 

 Gosling was much amused by his guides, who, when he shot a 

 red river-hog, hotly pursued it with their guns as it made 

 off before falling dead. Soon he heard a cap miss fire, 

 followed quickly by a shot, and on coming up with them it 

 seemed to Gosling from the expression of his face that one of 

 the men was undergoing great agony. It appeared, how- 

 ever, that the only reason for his contorted visage was that 

 his gun had failed to go off while the other man had got a 

 shot. But he was much consoled when it was discovered on 

 examining the pig that his companion had missed it after all. 

 The native with his gun is just like a child with a new toy ; 

 he never leaves it a moment out of his sight, and even though 



