48 
LAKE RUDOLPH 
oryx, Bright’s variety of Grant’s gazelle, Grevy’s zebra, gerenuk, 
dik dik, &c. Bird life was also very plentiful, and we were able 
to secure an ample supply of francolin and guinea-fowl and had 
the best of sport with sand-grouse. 
Resuming our journey the next thing we saw of note were 
two or three small islands about three miles off the shore. 
Seeing that these were inhabited we fitted up our Berthon 
collapsible boat and two of us sailed over to one of them. On 
approaching the island we saw several men coming down to 
meet us each with a large bunch of grass in their hands. (We 
had evidently surprised them in the midst of thatching their 
huts and they were too surprised to lay the grass aside !) 
These people we afterwards learned called themselves the 
‘ Elmolo ’ and very much resemble the Samburu in appearance, 
but by way of ornament wear fish-bones in their ears. Their 
reception of us was very friendly indeed, involving much 
handshaking all round, after which we were taken along to 
their huts. These Elmolo, we learned through the medium 
of our Masai interpreter, subsist entirely on a fish diet, the 
results of which are painfully evident in their leprous appear- 
ance, rawness of lips, very white hands, and the presence of 
some deformity or other in most of them. Poor as they 
seemed as a race, they were not, however, lacking in ingenuity, 
as evidenced by their cleverly made fishing lines — manufactured 
from the fibre of the wild banana growing on the shore — their 
very fine nets, and the rafts fashioned from the trunks of palm 
trees bound together with grass ropes. We had occasion to 
test the efficiency of these rafts, for the wind blew up too strong 
to allow of our sailing the Berthon boat back to the mainland, 
and we were paddled back by the Elmolo on one of their 
rafts. Their paddles were very strongly made and were used 
as punting poles in shallow water. 
The Elmolo seemed to live in terror of the Abyssinians, who 
occasionally raid down these shores of Rudolph. I understand 
that at one time these people collected quite a useful herd of 
goats and sheep together and had got so far as to leave their 
islands and settle on the mainland, but owing to the depreda- 
tions of the Abyssinians, who from what I could gather used 
to kidnap them and impress them as guides to the Randili and 
Samburu kraals, they had to return to their diminutive 
