244 ADVENTURES OF AN ELEPHANT HUNTER ch . 
has been carried out with the utmost secrecy, there 
is very little chance of the culprit being discovered 
and brought to justice. 
The 'above practices are known to few, if any, 
Europeans living in those parts of Africa in which 
they obtain ; and the reader may naturally wonder 
how I have managed to become acquainted with 
them. Let me explain. During my ten years of 
hunting, I have been in many life and death 
escapades with my trackers and men, and, as the 
reader can see by my narrative, we have again and 
again pulled one another out of a tight corner. 
This fact alone is apt to breed an intimacy of 
thought among men, however diverse the races to 
which they may belong. Besides, I speak their 
language as fluently, perhaps more fluently, than I 
do my own, and often, for the very sake of com¬ 
panionship, I will let drop the strict sense of master 
and man, and joke and laugh with them in a 
familiar way. They appreciate this without taking 
any advantage of it, and when in a communicative 
mood, tell me things that intimately concern their 
private lives, a subject which they rarely, if ever, 
touch upon with a European. 
I shall now set down a list of the more virulent 
poisons generally used by the natives, either for 
personal revenge, for poisoning arrows and spears, 
or for use in the poison ordeals. 
