8o ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



the Garden of Eden. There are only a few among their 

 number having any skill at hunting, and even these are not 

 what I should call expert hunters. They kill now and then an 

 elephant or two or a rhinoceros, either by creeping up to and 

 harpooning them or by trapping with a suspended javelin in a 

 heavy shaft, on the " booby trap " principle, set in their paths, 

 the weapon in either case being poisoned. In spite of the 

 poison, however, the animal (at all events in the case of 

 harpooning by hand) more often gets away wounded than is 

 bagged, and frequently recovers from the wound, as I have 

 myself shot elephants with old wounds on them, and in one we 

 found the head of the weapon. Game of other kinds they 

 seem hardly ever able to kill at all, except once in a way 

 getting a giraffe in these traps. Their easiest victim is the rhino, 

 which, on account of its sleepiness, is easily crept up to quite 

 close ; and in consequence, in the neighbourhoods frequented 

 by these savages, rhinos are scarce and the few there are rarely 

 show themselves during daylight outside the thick bush. 



To return from this anticipatory digression to my journey. 

 I left this time only half-a-dozen men in charge of my goods 

 at Laiju ; for I wanted all available porters to carry food for 

 myself and those who were to stay with me in the wilderness, 

 and my small, but strong stockade being by this time com- 

 pleted, a few were quite safe inside, in the event of any trouble 

 with the neighbouring natives during my absence, and able to 

 take care of my belongings. I will not gi\'e a detailed account 

 of this journey from day to day, as it would be tedious. I 

 travelled at first by a rather circuitous route round the eastern 

 end of the Jambeni Range (the one always taken by Swahili 

 ivory traders visiting the Ndorobo country), but instead of 

 following the course upwards of the Gwaso Nyiro River, I 

 crossed it and struck across country to a mountain called 

 Gwargess, and thence to the foot of the Lorogi Mountains, 

 where I formed a camp on a small stream called El Bogoi. 

 There is a fair quantity of game in places along the route, 



