African Game Trails 
659 
unprovoked assaults on canoes and boats. 
In one instance a last surviving hippo was 
protected for years, but finally grew bold 
because of immunity, killed a boy in sheer 
wantonness, and had to be himself slain. 
In Uganda the buffalo were for years pro¬ 
tected, and grew so bold, killed so many 
natives, and ruined so many villages, that 
they are now classed as vermin and their 
destruction in every way encouraged. In 
the very neighbor¬ 
hood where I was 
hunting at Kenia, 
but six weeks before 
dered down into the 
plains and run 
amuck, had at¬ 
tacked two villages, 
had killed a man 
and a boy, and had 
then been mobbed 
to death by the 
spearmen. Ele¬ 
phant, when in 
numbers, and when 
not possessed of the 
fear of man, are 
more impossible 
neighbors than hip¬ 
po, rhino, or buffalo; 
but they are so ea¬ 
gerly sought after 
by ivory hunters that 
it is only rarely that 
they get the chance 
to become really 
dangerOUS tO life, 1-rom a photograph 
although in many 
places their ravages among the crops are 
severely felt by the unfortunate natives 
who live near them. 
The chase of the elephant, if persistently 
followed, entails more fatigue and hardship 
than any other kind of African hunting. 
As regards risk, it is hard to say whether it 
is more or less dangerous than the chase of 
the lion and the buffalo. Both Cuning- 
hame and Tarlton, men of wide experience, 
ranked elephant hunting, in point of dan¬ 
ger, as nearly on the level with lion hunt¬ 
ing, and as more dangerous than buffalo 
hunting; and all three kinds as far more 
dangerous than the chase of the rhino. 
Personally, I believe the actual conflict with 
a lion, where the conditions are the same, 
to be normally the more dangerous sport 1 ; 
though far greater demands are made by 
elephant hunting on the qualities of per¬ 
sonal endurance and hardihood and reso¬ 
lute perseverance in the face of disappoint¬ 
ment and difficulty. Buffalo, seemingly, 
do not charge as freely as elephant, but are 
more dangerous when they do charge. 
Rhino when hunted, though at times ugly 
customers, seem to 
me certainly less 
dangerous than the 
other three; but 
from sheer stupid 
truculence they are 
themselves apt to 
take the offensive 
in unexpected fash¬ 
ion, being far more 
prone to such ag¬ 
gression than are 
any of the others— 
man-eating lions al¬ 
ways excepted. 
Very few of the 
native tribes in 
Africa hunt the ele¬ 
phant systematical¬ 
ly. But the ’Ndo- 
robo, the wild bush 
people of East 
Africa, sometimes 
catch young 'ele¬ 
phants in the pits 
they dig with slow 
labor, and very rare- 
eiephant. ly they kill one with 
by r. j. cuniughame. a kind of harpoon. 
The ’Ndorobo are 
doubtless in part descended from some 
primitive bush people, but in part also 
derive their blood from the more advanced 
tribes near which their wandering families 
happen to live; and they grade into the lat¬ 
ter, by speech and through individuals who 
seem to stand half-way between. Thus 
we had with us two Masai ’Ndorobo, true 
wild people, who spoke a bastard Masai; 
who had formerly hunted with Cuning- 
hame, and who came to us because of 
their ancient friendship with him. These 
shy woods creatures were afraid to come to 
Neri by daylight, when we were camped 
there, but after dark crept to Cuning- 
hame’s tent. Cuninghame gave them two 
