6 ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



first part of the journey itself make uninteresting reading, and 

 anything that I may think worth mentioning on these subjects 

 I can more conveniently allude to elsewhere ; I will, therefore, 

 not worry my readers with tedious preliminaries of the kind 

 now, beyond saying that in one month I was ready with 

 about fifty men (all of whom I armed with Snider carbines) 

 and some twenty donkeys to start for the " bara " or interior, 

 with the intention of getting as far as I could and being away 

 as long as I liked. That was, I consider, a short time to take 

 in all the preparations necessary. Mombasa did not offer many 

 facilities for getting work done, and I had brought nothing but 

 my guns and cartridges with me ; but porters were plentiful, 

 and I was known to them, not unfavourably — my very Swahili 

 name, " Nyama Yangu " (my meat or my game), being 

 suggestive of good times. My headman was not altogether 

 a happy selection. He was a most polite, polished, and 

 picturesque Swahili gentleman of Arab descent, but not 

 very practical. Plucky he was, as I afterwards found, but 

 somewhat procrastinating and over punctilious about strict 

 Mahomedan observances to be altogether suitable to the rough- 

 and-ready life we had to lead. Owing partly to this not too 

 suitable appointment, some undesirable men got " written on " 

 as porters. There are abuses in the manner of engaging these 

 men ; and if not very carefully looked after, the wily rupee 

 plays an important but indiscriminating part in their choice, 

 quite unconnected with any useful qualifications. The result 

 became apparent pretty soon, but not, fortunately, on any very 

 serious scale. 



Our start, two days before Christmas, was most smooth 

 and propitious. The men all turned up, and never was 

 there a happier and more enthusiastic lot of porters nor, 

 for the most part, a finer. Two or three desertions took 

 place a day or two after, causing a little temporary incon- 

 venience, and one gentleman took the belt containing my 

 watch with him, which had been hung on a bush behind me 



