196 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch. 
The close of his childhood may roughly be fixed at 
the age of ten, when he enters more fully into the 
life of the village and accompanies his elders on 
hunting and fishing expeditions, either participating 
in the sport or assisting as a carrier. Coming to 
maturity early, as all Africans do, he usually marries 
between the ages of ten and twelve, and is then 
admitted into full companionship with his elders. 
He now sets up house, so to speak, he and his wife 
building their future home together, There is no 
necessity to buy furniture on the instalment system, 
for theirs is actually the simple life. A bed, some 
mats, calabashes for water, utensils for grinding corn 
and crushing and cooking food, form all their house¬ 
hold goods—in fact, you could put the furniture of 
a whole village into a pantechnicon. From the date 
of his marriage commences the most arduous portion 
of his life. He has now to make himself a shamba 
(garden), so that he may grow the simple necessaries 
that form his daily bread. There is no question of 
landlord and tenant to worry him ; he simply marks 
out the earth that no man owns and clears it for 
cultivation, and the natural freedom of this act has 
always presented to my mind a vivid contrast to the 
trespass laws, the barbed wire and the lordly sense 
of proprietorship that attach to land in the Old 
Country. 
After a while, our native may fall in love with 
