244 ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



The much higher temperature here to what it is where we had 

 come from was very noticeable. 



It proved true enough that elephants were in the neighbour- 

 hood again, but my bad luck still pursued me. At this time 

 there was hardly any wind, and what there was used to come 

 in eddying currents, rendering it almost impossible to approach 

 game in these difficult jungles without its getting your scent. 

 Only once during two hard days did I succeed in getting a 

 snap-shot, and then failed to score. 



On the evening of this second day, after returning dis- 

 appointed to camp, Lesiat and his wife came down, bringing 

 me mead. It was very good, and they seemed to have found 

 it so themselves, for they were unusually talkative. He had 

 often pressed me to give his wife medicine to enable her to 

 bear him another child. He now declared that she had one in 

 the small of her back, where it had been a year, but could not 

 get it into the proper position to be brought forth, and that 

 God refused to allow her to be delivered. He put her hand in 

 mine and implored me to give him some charrn, that he might 

 have additional offspring. Though 1 did not want to seem to 

 make light of his distress, I could not help laughing, in spite of 

 my own dejection. He admitted that she had already had 

 five children ; but, on my delicately hinting that this was surely 

 no despicable family for one woman to have borne him, he 

 scouted the idea and declared that she wanted twenty ! I then 

 ventured to vaguely suggest that, as she already shared his 

 affection with another lady, perhaps she would not resent a 

 third (and younger one) being received into the partnership and 

 accorded another small slice of his heart. But to this he 

 replied dejectedly that Ndorobo girls would have nothing to say 

 to an old man. I had always told him I was ignorant of this 

 branch of medicine, but he refused to believe me, and on this 

 occasion was determined not to be put off with excuses and 

 promised me fabulous ivory if I would help him. Seeing that 

 he was in a particularly impracticable mood to-day, I persuaded 



