V 
NDOROBO ELEPHANT-HUNTING 
ii 5 
dent on their memories and establish their confidence in my 
powers. 
Among those of El Bogoi, Lesiat was the leading man 
and my especial confederate. I think an Ndorobo becomes 
the head of a community by being a slayer of elephants, etc., 
his following increasing in proportion to his success in the 
chase. 
Lesiat had for long been bothering me to give him a 
charm to increase his power in this pursuit. My assurances 
that I had no such occult powers merely made him the more 
importunate. He regarded my objections as a refusal to help 
him, and a proof of unfriendliness to him. When I was about 
to leave he became more pressing, promised to keep ivory for 
me against my return, as an acknowledgment, should I 
consent, and assumed a hurt air at what he regarded as my 
unkind obstinacy. Squareface interceded for him, explaining 
to me that Swahilis always accede to such requests, the most 
approved charm being a verse of the Koran, written in Arabic 
on a slip of paper. Not wishing to appear unfeeling, and 
seeing that no harm could come of it at all events, it occurred 
to me that a line or two of Shakespeare would probably be 
quite as effective. Bearing in mind that the Ndorobo hunter 
owes his success—when he has any—mainly to the powerful 
poison with which his weapon is smeared, if he can only 
manage to introduce it, in the proper manner, into the animal’s 
economy, it struck me that the following quotation would be 
appropriate ; and I accordingly wrote it on a slip of paper, 
illustrating it with a little sketch of an elephant:— 
I bought an unction of a mountebank, 
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, 
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, 
Collected from all simples that have virtue 
Under the moon, can save the thing from death 
That is but scratched withal; I’ll touch my point 
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, 
It may be death. 
