78 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA chap, hi 
endeavours to persuade them that we desired to discuss and 
arrange the matter amicably, they surrounded us and after 
dark began to shoot arrows at us, compelling us in self-defence 
to dislodge them with our rifles. In the morning we retired 
with the teeth without retaliating in any other way for their 
attack upon us than by preventing them from making any 
further attempt to interfere with us. I regretted very much 
having been forced into a quarrel ; but when, on a subsequent 
occasion, I visited their district, these natives had been trans¬ 
formed, by the lesson they had learnt, from enemies into 
enthusiastic friends. On passing through their country they 
welcomed us, entreated me to become their blood brother, 
acknowledging that our former little misunderstanding had been 
all their fault ; and as I was pleased to accede to their request 
and go through the ceremony of “ eating blood ”—in the midst 
of an admiring, crowded audience, who solemnly murmured 
earnest words of assent, after the manner of responses, to each 
sentence of the declaration of brotherhood between us, 
declaimed by the officiating performers of the rite which 
constitutes the bond—they are now, I am happy to say, among 
my firmest friends. 
Apart from one’s natural reluctance to be deprived of the 
hardly-earned reward of much arduous hunting and many 
blank days, I considered it a duty to make a point of 
retrieving these tusks after being returned a defiant answer to 
my civil message : a duty, I mean, not only to oneself, but to 
future travellers, to insist on the white man’s property being 
respected. There is nothing I hate more than rows with the 
natives ; but when forced on one you must go through with 
them or lose all their respect. In all my dealings with the 
natives in Central Africa, one consideration I ever bear in 
mind is to try to make the country safe for other Europeans 
who may come after me. 
