66 SAFARI 



about a rod; tnen said, — "Bwana, over by the Old 

 Lady Waterhole (a name Osa had given one of the 

 small oases), you will find five bull tembo, four 

 females, and three little toto." 



It was unbelievable, but when we climbed some 

 more boulders, cut down a flower-strewn ravine and 

 came to a great grove of mimosas watered by a 

 cascade falling into a natural saucer our faith was 

 restored. There quietly grazing were the elephants 

 our black paragon had promised us. 



That even Boculy was human I discovered one 

 day when he called me aside, saying he had some- 

 thing very secret to tell me. He then proceeded to 

 confide in me that we should never get pictures so 

 long as Ndundu, one of our other guides, was with us. 

 It seemed, he went on to explain, that Ndundu had a 

 peculiar kind of blood which caused all the game to 

 leave as soon as he came into a neighborhood. The 

 manner of the animals' leaving was for them to vanish 

 into thin air. Before he confessed all of this to me 

 he had convinced my other porters of its truth. 

 However, so rotten had our luck been just then that 

 I was almost ready to believe it myself. It took a 

 lot of tactful talk to dispel Boculy's dark beHefs. 



One day I asked my laboratory boy why he didn't 

 take a bath, once, say, in six months. In the warmth 

 of the little room in which we worked I found his body 

 smell particularly offensive. 



