244 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
The much higher temperature here to what it is where we had 
come from was very noticeable. 
It proved true enough that elephants were in the neighbour¬ 
hood again, but my bad luck still pursued me. At this time 
there was hardly any wind, and what there was used to come 
in eddying currents, rendering it almost impossible to approach 
game in these difficult jungles without its getting your scent. 
Only once during two hard days did I succeed in getting a 
snap-shot, and then failed to score. 
On the evening of this second day, after returning dis¬ 
appointed to camp, Lesiat and his wife came down, bringing 
me mead. It was very good, and they seemed to have found 
it so themselves, for they were unusually talkative. He had 
often pressed me to give his wife medicine to enable her to 
bear him another child. He now declared that she had one in 
the small of her back, where it had been a year, but could not 
get it into the proper position to be brought forth, and that 
God refused to allow her to be delivered. He put her hand in 
mine and implored me to give him some charm, that he might 
have additional offspring. Though I did not want to seem to 
make light of his distress, I could not help laughing, in spite of 
my own dejection. He admitted that she had already had 
five children ; but, on my delicately hinting that this was surely 
no despicable family for one woman to have borne him, he 
scouted the idea and declared that she wanted twenty ! I then 
ventured to vaguely suggest that, as she already shared his 
affection with another lady, perhaps she would not resent a 
third (and younger one) being received into the partnership and 
accorded another small slice of his heart. But to this he 
replied dejectedly that Ndorobo girls would have nothing to say 
to an old man. I had always told him I was ignorant of this 
branch of medicine, but he refused to believe me, and on this 
occasion was determined not to be put off with excuses and 
promised me fabulous ivory if I would help him. Seeing that 
he was in a particularly impracticable mood to-day, I persuaded 
