210 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. IX 
faction at such a windfall. I, too, was well pleased as I 
returned to camp with the ivory. I then set to work, after 
weighing it, to make it up into loads. We had now again, 
besides the four loads carried by the donkeys, four loads for 
porters ; making, with the four already sent to El Bogoi, twelve 
loads as the result of the present little excursion. 
The next day we marched to the top camp on the river, 
I again driving two donkeys and carrying two rifles, and the 
morning following, while yet cool, we climbed the long steep 
stony ascent out of the valley, and halted during the heat of 
the day at the rock pool on the heights. It was a relief to 
get out of the hot valley and beyond the reach of the fetid 
odours exhaled by its pestiferous swamps, with their salt 
lagoons and reeking black slime, breeding fevers and swarms 
of mosquitoes—though even these unwholesome pools are not 
without their redeeming features, to wit, interesting birds 
(Egyptian geese, ibises, cranes, etc.). There was plenty of 
edible green stuff, too, to be had along the river, which Feruzi 
(my cook) always looked out for, and boiled as a vegetable 
for me ; while my donkeys did themselves well, there. On 
the tops—probably at least 1500 feet above the river—the 
air was cooler and fresher and there had been a good shower, 
reviving the grass and filling the pool with sweet water. 
While I rested under my “ fly ”—which had been pitched, 
without the tent, to give me shade, as there were no trees 
beyond a scraggy thorn or two,—I could see several elands, 
a pair of rhinos, and a herd of zebras 1 (Burchell’s with a 
few of Grevy’s), forming a picturesque group in a valley not 
more than half a mile away. One bull eland stood under 
a tree, apparently within shot of a gully; and, by going a 
long way round and getting into the gully higher up and 
then following it down, I could probably have stalked it. 
Baithai, a pleasant Ndorobo and a great chum of mine, who 
1 I call them Burchell’s, but they are really one of the allied varieties of the smaller 
zebras—all closely related—(possibly Grant’s). 
