Xr^ 



XI FROM EL BOGOI TO LAKE RUDOLPH 245 



him to defer all our business till I got back to my main camp, 

 whither I meant to return in a day or two. 



In the meantime I visited his kraal and paid my respects to 

 Mrs. Lesiat (that is, the principal Mrs. Lesiat, for there were 

 two) in her own hut. Though mere shelters of the most primi- 

 tive kind, and not even weather-proof, unless where a skin may 

 have been thrown over the roof, these huts are not dirty inside, 

 nor do they seem to harbour noxious insects. The people 

 themselves, too, appear to be clean in this respect, and do not, 

 like most of the South African races (the Swazies, for example), 

 improve every spare shining moment in examining each other's 

 heads. They also compare favourably in other ways — in 

 appearance, manners, and liberality — with those greedy, stingy, 

 untaking people. Indeed they are the pleasantest natives I 

 have come across, and far less grasping and objectionable than 

 most Africans. They are also healthy, clean-skinned, and free 

 from loathsome diseases, and, though a small race as a rule, are 

 wiry, active, and enduring. Their children always look sleek 

 and well fed, showing what a wholesome food honey, which 

 may be called their staff of life, is, and I saw none with skin 

 diseases or pot bellies such as disfigure the children of the 

 agricultural tribes. 



The Ndorobos live on what they can pick up. To call 

 them a race of hunters is hardly correct ; for though they, or 

 rather a few individuals among them, slay an elephant or two 

 and an odd rhinoceros now and then, with poisoned harpoons 

 either thrown by hand or suspended in heavy shafts as traps 

 over paths, they kill but little other game. Their mainstay is 

 honey. This is a great country for flowers, and bees are very 

 plentiful ; and, besides constantly hunting for the wild nests, 

 like some other tribes they put up tubs made of hollowed logs 

 in the trees for the wild bees to hive in, and when the season is 

 favourable the land flows with honey. But they are as often 

 as not in a state of semi-starvation, supporting life on roots, 

 berries, and old hoarded pieces of dry rhinoceros hide. In 



