73 
EAST AFRICA AND ITS BIG GAME. 
from Lanjora to Taveta, and that the scene which 
followed beggared all description. The nearest porters, 
excited by the prospect of meat, of which they had 
tasted so little on the march up, threw down their 
loads and hurled themselves upon the carcass as one 
man. They had the skin off “ in no time,” and then 
worried the flesh, fighting and squabbling like a pack 
of famished hysenas. The entrails seemed to be the 
tit-bits most sought after, and some of the men, being 
in far too great a hurry to think of cooking, merely 
tore the meat from the bones and crammed it into 
their mouths raw. This episode, of course, delayed 
the caravan a long time, and B- said he was de¬ 
termined, in future, not to shoot at anything on the 
march, unless it happened to be some rare specimen. 
Mr. Jackson very kindly offered to take one of us 
on a shooting trip with him, while the rest went in 
search of game in some other direction, and this 
arrangement exactly fell in with our proposed plans. 
We were expecting B-’s brother C- to arrive 
shortly; he had left England a month after us, and 
was to be accompanied by mission men as far as Ndara, 
where fifty of our people would meet him as an escort 
for the remainder of the distance. We also had to 
send back all our own mission men, and at least 
twenty natives would be required, for some time, at 
Taveta to enlarge the camp and build a big house for 
ourselves ; therefore, taking into consideration about 
twenty-five sick men, besides deserters, there was only 
left an available force of forty, an insufficient escort 
