432 ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap. 



weapons contrast strikingly with the short light bows and 

 arrows used by most Central African natives. It must require 

 great force to draw one of these formidable engines properly ; 

 and one can well understand that those skilled in their use, 

 with the additional aid of poison on the missile, may kill — as 

 they say they do — both elephants and rhinoceroses without 

 much difficult}'. That both these animals frequent the river, 

 especially during periods of drought, I had evidence in their 

 tracks. Once I came upon quite fresh elephant spoor ; but as 

 it was only of cows and calves I did not follow it. I might 

 have done so, on the chance of finding a young bull or a cow 

 worth shooting, but that I was lame at the time from my ankle 

 (which had been sprained in my encounter with the elephant) 

 having got worse again. 



As proof of how thoroughly inured to carr}'ing their tusks 

 my men had become, I may instance the march we made the 

 day we left the river, when the distance to the first water was 

 considerable. The entry for that day (26th September) runs 

 as follows in my diary : — " Got up at 2 A.M. and started at 

 3.15, After four hours' going waited for the 'safari,' but 

 the men would not stop and we went on for another hour 

 before resting, having thus done five hours' solid marching 

 without a halt. Then, after a fifteen minutes' spell, did three 

 hours more ; rested half an hour and on to camp, which the 

 caravan reached at 1.45. Thus we did close on ten hours' 

 clear marching, the greater part of the way through dense bush, 

 the narrow path often a good deal overhung." 



At last, on ist October, we once more entered Mombasa; 

 and the men — decked in showy clothes, and headed by 

 drummers hammering out, in perfect time, the regular "safari" 

 beat — enjoyed the long-looked-forward-to parade through the 

 streets. And a picturesque sight it is to see a string of 

 porters, with gleaming ivory arcs on their shoulders, threading 

 slowly the narrow streets, thronged with dusky but cleanly- 

 clad onlookers ; the leading men jumping up and dancing 



