Wambuba Cannibals 



axes and knobbed sticks of all shapes and sizes, and others 

 again with elephant-tusk trumpets slung round their necks, 

 they were a fearsome crowd that passed that day in review 

 before us. Where meat was concerned they were tigers, 

 and later on fought tooth and nail for every scrap of the two 

 elephants I shot, including their thick hide and bones. At 

 this bloody battle a terrible sight for any ordinary individual 

 to witness, I gained, as never before, an insight into the meat- 

 lust of the cannibal — the human hyaena — knowledge which 

 seemed to lend a chiU to the hot sunshine as if for a moment 

 a cold wind had passed by. I pictured them in my mind's 

 eye cutting up their dead victim, squabbling over the tit- 

 bits and afterwards doing other fearful things with those 

 chipped crocodile teeth of theirs. 



At intervals in the course of the night trumpet signals 

 could be heard calling to other " hyaenas " below the escarp- 

 ment (I heard no drum-signalling in this country), no doubt 

 spreading the disturbing news of our visit and its object. 



I left the camp early next morning and under the guidance 

 of two local criminals, we followed the over-night spoor of 

 some elephants, which took us in the course of half an hour 

 out of the forest on to an undulating long-grass country 

 of large extent, bounded on one side by the dense forest, 

 on the other by the lip of the steep escarpment I have pre- 

 viously mentioned. In many ways it was an astonishing 

 kind of place — an island of grass in a sea of forest. There 

 were but few trees upon it, and the line of demarcation between 

 grass and forest was sharply defined, as if neither would 

 concede one inch of the ground they each occupied. 



Having got well out into the open I climbed a solitary 

 tree, from which vantage point I could look out over the 



177 N 



