A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



he had Roman features and wore a purple robe, was a stately 

 old drunkard, full of dignity, false promises, and native wine. 

 One of the others, who had adopted the Arab name of AH, was 

 a small, wiry, war-like man, who meant well, but was very 

 suspicious of white men. We discovered that he had been 

 stowed away by the authorities in a government fort for several 

 years for carelessly slaughtering a caravan of Swahili traders, 

 and had been released and reinstated on the promise of good 

 behavior. The remaining chief, Mutari, an extremely tall and 

 angular old man, who, nevertheless, had much the largest follow- 

 ing, tried in every w^ay to please us by locating the whereabouts 

 of elephants, and continually sent us presents. When we finally 

 parted from this very decent old savage, it was with mutual 

 regret. 



Owing to a complicated and three-cornered theft of some 

 live-stock, the three rulers were on anything but friendly terms 

 on our arrival, and, as we were the first white men to visit the 

 country for a long time, the dispute w^as immediately brought 

 to us for arbitration. Though we diligently exerted ourselves 

 through our headman and our interpreter, it required con- 

 siderable diplomacy and many long conferences between ele- 

 phant-hunts to prevent a petty native war among these people. 

 During the day the women and older men tended the flocks of 

 goats, sheep, and cattle, and beat drums and kettles in the fields 

 to raise enough din to frighten away the myriads of small birds 

 from the grain. The fighting-men patrolled the whole country, 

 and at dusk the herds were driven into strongly stockaded 

 villages of conical-shaped thatched huts for protection during 

 the nigh' . 



The day we arrived and many following days were spent m 

 bartering for provisions with the natives through our headman. 

 An uninterrupted procession of families of Meru poured into 

 camp, each consisting of a warrior, adorned with an elaborate 

 head-dress, and armed with an eight-foot spear and a knob- 



130 



