78 ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap, hi 



endeavours to persuade them that we desired to discuss and 

 arrange the matter amicably, they surrounded us and after 

 dark began to shoot arrows at us, compelling us in self-defence 

 to dislodge them with our rifles. In the morning we retired 

 with the teeth without retaliating in any other way for their 

 attack upon us than by preventing them from making any 

 further attempt to interfere with us. I regretted very much 

 having been forced into a quarrel ; but when, on a subsequent 

 occasion, I visited their district, these natives had been trans- 

 formed, by the lesson they had learnt, from enemies into 

 enthusiastic friends. On passing through their country they 

 welcomed us, entreated me to become their blood brother, 

 acknowledging that our former little misunderstanding had been 

 all their fault ; and as I was pleased to accede to their request 

 and go through the ceremony of " eating blood " — in the midst 

 of an admiring, crowded audience, who solemnly murmured 

 earnest words of assent, after the manner of responses, to each 

 sentence of the declaration of brotherhood between us, 

 declaimed by the officiating performers of the rite which 

 constitutes the bond — they are now, I am happy to say, among 

 my firmest friends. 



Apart from one's natural reluctance to be deprived of the 

 hardly-earned reward of much arduous hunting and many 

 blank days, I considered it a duty to make a point of 

 retrieving these tusks after being returned a defiant answer to 

 my civil message : a duty, I mean, not only to oneself, but to 

 future travellers, to insist on the white man's property being 

 respected. There is nothing I hate more than rows with the 

 natives ; but when forced on one you must go through with 

 them or lose all their respect. In all my dealings with the 

 natives in Central Africa, one consideration I ever bear in 

 mind is to try to make the country safe for other Europeans 

 who may come after me. 



