XI 
FROM EL BO GO I TO LAKE RUDOLPH 
245 
him to defer all our business till I got back to my main camp, 
whither I meant to return in a day or two. 
In the meantime I visited his kraal and paid my respects to 
Mrs. Lesiat (that is, the principal Mrs. Lesiat, for there were 
two) in her own hut. Though mere shelters of the most primi¬ 
tive kind, and not even weather-proof, unless where a skin may 
have been thrown over the roof, these huts are not dirty inside, 
nor do they seem to harbour noxious insects. The people 
themselves, too, appear to be clean in this respect, and do not, 
like most of the South African races (the Swazies, for example), 
improve every spare shining moment in examining each other’s 
heads. They also compare favourably in other ways — in 
appearance, manners, and liberality—with those greedy, stingy, 
untaking people. Indeed they are the pleasantest natives I 
have come across, and far less grasping and objectionable than 
most Africans. They are also healthy, clean-skinned, and free 
from loathsome diseases, and, though a small race as a rule, are 
wiry, active, and enduring. Their children always look sleek 
and well fed, showing what a wholesome food honey, which 
may be called their staff of life, is, and I saw none with skin 
diseases or pot bellies such as disfigure the children of the 
agricultural tribes. 
The Ndorobos live on what they can pick up. To call 
them a race of hunters is hardly correct; for though they, or 
rather a few individuals among them, slay an elephant or two 
and an odd rhinoceros now and then, with poisoned harpoons 
either thrown by hand or suspended in heavy shafts as traps 
over paths, they kill but little other game. Their mainstay is 
honey. This is a great country for flowers, and bees are very 
plentiful ; and, besides constantly hunting for the wild nests, 
like some other tribes they put up tubs made of hollowed logs 
in the trees for the wild bees to hive in, and when the season is 
favourable the land flows with honey. But they are as often 
as not in a state of semi-starvation, supporting life on roots, 
berries, and old hoarded pieces of dry rhinoceros hide. In 
