270 
HUN TEES. 
Chap. XV. 
Manenko ; and as I could not hurry matters, I went into the 
adjacent country to search for meat for the camp. 
The country is furnished largely with forest, having occa¬ 
sionally open lawns covered with gTass, not in tufts as in the 
south, hut so closely planted that one cannot see the soil. We 
came upon a man and his two wives and children, hiuning coarse 
rushes and the stallcs of tsitla, gTowing in a brackish marsh, in 
order to extract a kind of salt from the ashes. They make a 
funnel of branches of trees, and line it with gTass rope, twisted 
round until it is, as it were, a beehive-roof inverted. The ashes 
are put into water, in a calabash, and then it is allowed to per¬ 
colate tluough the small hole in the bottom and tluough the 
gTass. When this water is evaporated in the sun, it yields 
sufficient salt to form a relish with food. The women and 
children fled with precipitation, hut we sat down at a distance, 
and allowed the man time to gain courage enough to speak. He, 
however, trembled excessively at the apparition before him; 
but when we explained that our object was to hunt game, and 
not men, he became calm, and called back his wives. We soon 
afterwards came to another party on the same errand with our¬ 
selves. The man had a bow about six feet long, and uon- 
headed arrows about thirty inches in length; he had also 
wooden arrows neatly barbed, to shoot in cases where he might 
not be quite certain of recovering them again. We soon after¬ 
wards got a zebra, and gave our hunting acquaintances such a 
liberal share that we soon became friends. All whom we saw 
that day then came with us to the encampment to beg a little 
meat; and as they have so little salt, I have no doubt they felt 
grateful for what we gave. 
Sekelenke and Ins peoj^le, twenty-four in number, defiled past 
oiu camp carrying large bundles of dried elephants’ meat. Most 
of tliem came to say good-bye, and Sekelenke himself sent to say 
that he had gone to visit a wife living in the village of Manenko. 
It was a mere African manoeuvre to gain information, and not 
commit himself to either one line of action or another, with re¬ 
spect to our visit. As he was probably in the party before us, I 
replied that it was all right, and when my people came up from 
Masiko, I would go to my wife too. Another zebra came to our 
camp, and as we had friends near, it was shot. It was the Uquus 
