12 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
impressively. I then made their hearts white with presents, 
as their bodies with calico, and Baikenda and I became, as he 
put it, as if born of one mother, emphasising the relationship 
with expressive pantomime by squeezing suggestively his 
shrivelled old breast with his hand. 
It is a fertile district, and food was to be had in fair 
abundance and considerable variety. Luscious bananas were 
plentiful and fine yams cheap and good. My cook used to 
make me what he called “ smash-im-up ” of the latter—a capital 
substitute for mashed potatoes : indeed, as regards vegetable 
products, I lived better while here than I ever did again, and 
often, when restricted for months and months together to 
porridge and cakes of coarse dry meal in the barren country 
farther north, did I think of those delicious bananas. 
Intending to make this my headquarters for a while, and 
finding Chanler’s boma too straggling to be a secure depot in 
which to leave my goods in charge of a few men (though I 
used it as a camp myself), I spent some time in building a 
strong little stockade for this purpose. Various circumstances, 
into the details of which it is not necessary to enter, prevented 
my making any extended hunting trip for a much longer time 
than I had intended to delay here. I was able to obtain meat 
easily enough, as game of one sort or another was generally 
to be found within a long walk of my camp—waterbuck 
and zebra being the most numerous—and the young natives 
were always pleased to accompany me, being keen for meat, 
though they had a curious prejudice against letting their 
womenkind see them with any. 
Of my first small excursion in quest of elephants—although 
unsuccessful in that I did not get a sight of any—a short account 
may not be uninteresting, since I saw a good deal of other game, 
and had a certain amount of sport ; but elephant-hunting being 
the main object of my expedition—as it is to be the principal 
subject of this book—I will not dwell too much upon it. It 
occupied little more than a fortnight, and the farthest point I 
