130 TRAPS AND PITFALLS. Chap. Y. 



" We are strangers," answered Masakasa, " why do you 

 not bring ns some food ? " He took the plain hint, and 

 brought us two fowls, in order that we should not report 

 that in passing him we got nothing to eat ; and, as usual, 

 we gave a cloth in return. In reference to the hippo- 

 potamus he would make no demand, but said he would 

 take what we chose to give him. The men gorged them- 

 selves with meat for two days, and cut large quantities 

 into long narrow strips, which they half-dried and half- 

 roasted on wooden frames over the fire. Much game is 

 taken in this neighbourhood in pitfalls. Sharp-pointed 

 stakes are set in the bottom, on which the game tumbles 

 and gets impaled. The natives are careful to warn 

 strangers of these traps, and also of the poisoned beams 

 suspended on the tall trees for the purpose of killing 

 elephants and hippopotami. It is not difficult to detect the 

 pitfalls after one's attention has been called to them ; but 

 in places where they are careful to carry the earth off to a 

 distance, and a person is not thinking of such things, a 

 sudden descent of nine feet is an experience not easily 

 forgotten by the traveller. The sensations of one thus 

 instantaneously swallowed up by the earth are peculiar. 

 A momentary suspension of consciousness is followed by 

 the rustling sound of a shower of sand and dry grass, and 

 the half-bewildered thought of where he is, and how he 

 came into darkness. Eeason awakes to assure him that 

 he must have come down through that small opening of 

 daylight overhead, and that he is now where a hippo- 

 potamus ought to have been. The descent of a hippopota- 

 mus pitfall is easy, but to get out again into the upper air 

 is a work of labour. The sides are smooth and treacherous, 

 and the cross reeds, which support the covering, break 

 in the attempt to get out by clutching them. A cry from 

 the depths is unheard by those around, and it is only by 

 repeated and most desperate efforts that the buried alive 



