42 
ON SAFARI 
us a fair-sized crowd of natives—between forty and 
fifty human beings, Swahili porters, askaris armed with 
Sniders, hunters, tent-boys, and the usual components 
of what is called a “ safari,” or caravan.. These we 
thought would make a useful troop of beaters ; but they 
hardly viewed the undertaking with the same enthu¬ 
siasm. A Swahili has his good points, but he is not a 
born sportsman, nor is he any longer a true savage. 
He wears clothes of sorts, drinks when he has a chance, 
and can reckon up how many rupees go to a sovereign. 
The true savage, such as the Masai, does none of these 
things. Any reluctance to act as beaters was, however, 
soon dispelled by the forceful suasion of our “ headman,” 
Maguiar, the huge Soudanese, whose word, backed by 
the obvious power to enforce it, was law beyond debate; 
and after breakfast we set forth amidst deafening din. 
The regular musical instruments indigenous to Central 
Africa, such as drums and tom-toms, were supplemented 
by empty biscuit-tins, gourds filled with pebbles, and 
other ear-splitting devices quite calculated to alarm even 
a lion. 
The scene of our proposed operations, less than an 
hour’s walk away, was a series of forest-patches which lay 
nestling along the northern shores of Lake Nakuru, a 
sheet of water some fifteen miles in length. These 
woods were of no great width, merely belts of a few 
hundred yards across, and conveniently divided from 
each other by natural opens at intervals of a mile or 
two. Inland from the forest-belt was open, grassy land, 
sloping upwards to low, rocky koppies, clad with what 
looked like bracken and brambles. The first two beats 
proved blank, nothing bigger than “ grass-antelopes ” or 
dikdiks being seen. In the third beat I was the 
penultimate gun on the left of the line, facing the lake, 
the last gun being posted to command the extreme end 
of that patch of forest on the lake-shore. I had selected 
for this work my 12-bore Paradox and an old # 450 
Express, to which I was long accustomed, as being 
better adapted for quick-moving shots at moderate 
