6 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
first part of the journey itself make uninteresting reading, and 
anything that I may think worth mentioning on these subjects 
I can more conveniently allude to elsewhere ; I will, therefore, 
not worry my readers with tedious preliminaries of the kind 
now, beyond saying that in one month I was ready with 
about fifty men (all of whom I armed with Snider carbines) 
and some twenty donkeys to start for the “ bara ” or interior, 
with the intention of getting as far as I could and being away 
as long as I liked. That was, I consider, a short time to take 
in all the preparations necessary. Mombasa did not offer many 
facilities for getting work done, and I had brought nothing but 
my guns and cartridges with me ; but porters were plentiful, 
and I was known to them, not unfavourably—my very Swahili 
name, “ Nyama Yangu” (my meat or my game), being 
suggestive of good times. My headman was not altogether 
a happy selection. He was a most polite, polished, and 
picturesque Swahili gentleman of Arab descent, but not 
very practical. Plucky he was, as I afterwards found, but 
somewhat procrastinating and over punctilious about strict 
Mahomedan observances to be altogether suitable to the rough- 
and-ready life we had to lead. Owing partly to this not too 
suitable appointment, some undesirable men got “ written on ” 
as porters. There are abuses in the manner of engaging these 
men ; and if not very carefully looked after, the wily rupee 
plays an important but indiscriminating part in their choice, 
quite unconnected with any useful qualifications. The result 
became apparent pretty soon, but not, fortunately, on any very 
serious scale. 
Our start, two days before Christmas, was most smooth 
and propitious. The men all turned up, and never was 
there a happier and more enthusiastic lot of porters nor, 
for the most part, a finer. Two or three desertions took 
place a day or two after, causing a little temporary incon¬ 
venience, and one gentleman took the belt containing my 
watch with him, which had been hung on a bush behind me 
