2IO ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap, ix 



faction at such a windfall. I, too, was well pleased as I 

 returned to camp with the ivory. I then set to work, after 

 weighing it, to make it up into loads. We had now again, 

 besides the four loads carried by the donkeys, four loads for 

 porters ; making, with the four already sent to El Bogoi, twelve 

 loads as the result of the present little excursion. 



The next day we marched to the top camp on the river, 

 I again driving two donkeys and carrying two rifles, and the 

 morning following, while yet cool, we climbed the long steep 

 stony ascent out of the valley, and halted during the heat of 

 the day at the rock pool on the heights. It was a relief to 

 get out of the hot valley and beyond the reach of the fetid 

 odours exhaled by its pestiferous swamps, with their salt 

 lagoons and reeking black slime, breeding fevers and swarms 

 of mosquitoes — though even these unwholesome pools are not 

 without their redeeming features, to wit, interesting birds 

 (Egyptian geese, ibises, cranes, etc.). There was plenty of 

 edible green stuff, too, to be had along the river, which Feruzi 

 (my cook) always looked out for, and boiled as a vegetable 

 for me ; while my donkeys did themselves well, there. On 

 the tops — probably at least 1500 feet above the river — the 

 air was cooler and fresher and there had been a good shower, 

 reviving the grass and filling the pool with sweet water. 

 While I rested under my " fly " — which had been pitched, 

 without the tent, to give me shade, as there were no trees 

 beyond a scraggy thorn or two, — I could see several elands, 

 a pair of rhinos, and a herd of zebras ^ (Burchell's with a 

 few of Grevy's), forming a picturesque group in a valley not 

 more than half a mile away. One bull eland stood under 

 a tree, apparently within shot of a gully ; and, by going a 

 long way round and getting into the gully higher up and 

 then following it down, I could probably have stalked it. 

 Baithai, a pleasant Ndorobo and a great chum of mine, who 



1 I call them Burchell's, but they are really one of the allied varieties of the smaller 

 zebras — all closely related — (possibly Grant's). 



