NATIVE WOMAN CARRIED OFF BY HYAENA. 171 
to mind his own business. This made him think they 
were being kept, more or less, as prisoners, and Martin 
said that such was most probably the case, as some 
little time ago a great many Ughono women and 
children had been kidnapped by a large Swahili caravan 
and carried off for slaves, and some form of retaliation 
was naturally to be expected. 
It rained frequently during our stay at Taveta, and 
cur bright little River Lumi became quite a dirty red 
colour, while all sorts of filth swept past our encamp¬ 
ment, including the decomposed body of a native. Two 
of our porters were at this time attacked with smallpox, 
and of course had to be isolated. One of them eventu¬ 
ally died, but the other recovered. I regretted to find 
on our return that poor Belail, who was so seriously 
and mysteriously ill on our first arrival, and whom I 
had tried to doctor, had succumbed during our absence. 
We caught several hyaenas and a civet or two near 
our hut and in some of the shambcis of the natives. A 
Wa-taveta man one morning came in, and without the 
least evidence of distress, said his wife had been carried 
off during the night by a hyaena, and requested the 
loan of one of our traps. It is extraordinary how little 
value these people seem to set even on the lives of 
near relations, but perhaps in this instance the loss 
was a happy release for the husband. I do not think 
any hyaena would have been bold enough to carry off a 
native, and the robber was most probably a leopard, as 
there were some of these bold marauders about. Later 
on w 7 e caught one in a trap, a singularly daring and 
