SOMALI METHOD OF HUNTING ELEPHANTS 129 
different character from Somalis who have much intercourse 
with white men. Four of my men now had fever, and had 
to be carried on camels, and I suffered terribly from diarrhoea 
and prickly heat, which prevented my sleeping at night. 
In the morning, through bad stalking on the part of my 
shikari, four zebra got our wind and made off. Owing to 
bad shooting on my part, soon after the same zebra escaped 
again. 
After seeing a great number of koodoo tracks without 
seeing the. animals themselves, we pitched for the mid-day 
rest on the bank of the dried-up river Sule, which runs 
into the Daghato River, which runs into the Shebeyli River, 
which runs — goodness only knows where 1 By means of 
digging with spears for the space of an hour, we made a 
hole upwards of feet deep, and produced some of the 
dirtiest, sandiest water I ever beheld. 
It is a pretty sight to watch the men baling out the 
water into buckets as they sing or chant, when up trot the 
ponies, sheep and donkeys to be watered, all knowing the 
song so well : ‘ Ho-a ho-ah, te da ta jummy, eh ali ya ha, ho 
elli yo ha !’ (Drink, pretty creature, drink !) 
We had not had a drop of rain for a month. Here 
I met a Somali elephant- hunter. Their manner of hunting 
these great pachyderms is as follows : Several men, each 
mounted on a good fast pony, approach a herd of elephants 
as near as possible, when they all throw their spears at one 
they have singled out. The infuriated animal then charges 
and pursues one of the mounted men, when another man 
with a long Abyssinian swmrd gallops up behind and 
endeavours to hamstring the elephant. If the elephant 
turns round and pursues this man, the first man pursues in 
his turn, and endeavours to disable the brute from behind. 
At length the poor bleeding animal sinks to the earth, and 
is despatched with the stabbing spear, but woe betide any 
man who approaches too close to the dying beast’s trunk. 
With the great influx of hunters into Somaliland in the 
last few years, the game has shifted further and further 
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