A White King in East Africa: The Remarkable Adventures of John Boyes, Trader and Soldier of Fortune, Who Became King of the Savage Wa-KikuyuBoyes, John
History
A White King in East Africa: The Remarkable Adventures of John Boyes, Trader and Soldier of Fortune, Who Became King of the Savage Wa-Kikuyu
Boyes, John
Africa, East; Kikuyu (African people)
as they said that if they did not do that, the bird would, on another
occasion, lead them on to a dangerous animal or a big snake. Of course
this was simply a piece of native superstition, which I satisfactorily
proved to have no truth in it, as I took the trouble to test it one day
when I had followed the honey bird, by taking every bit of the honey to
which it led me, without leaving any for the bird. After flying round
two or three times, it went twittering on again for another two or three
miles, and when it finally stopped, fluttering round a tree as before, I
found that it had simply led me to another store of honey; so I disposed
of one native belief.
The Wanderobo women were fairly well dressed—in skins—but the men wore
hardly any clothing at all. When necessity compels them to move they are
fairly good hunters, and will creep up to within ten yards of an
elephant, to spear it. The spear is fashioned something after the manner
of a harpoon, the head being fixed to the shaft in such a way that, on
striking the elephant, it becomes detached, and remains in the wound,
while the shaft falls to the ground. It would not, of course, be
sufficient to kill an elephant but for the fact that it is poisoned; and
even then the elephant will often travel a considerable distance before
succumbing to the poison. Singularly enough, the poison used appears
only to affect the part immediately in the neighbourhood of the wound,
and when this has been cut out, the natives eat the remainder of the
flesh with perfect safety. Of course, as I mentioned before, the
Wanderobo do not get the benefit of all the elephants they wound
fatally, as many of the wounded animals manage to wander too far away
into the forest to be tracked before they die, and any one finding them
gets the benefit of the ivory.
[Illustration: A DEAD RHINO]
The Wanderobo are very skilful with the bow and arrow, and can easily
send an arrow right through a buck at fifty yards’ range, while their
method of hunting these animals is distinctly novel. Taking a donkey,
they fix a pair of horns to its head, and having carefully marked it
with charcoal, to make it look as much like an ordinary buck as
possible, they then crawl up on the lee side of it until they get close
up to the game, which falls to an easy shot. The donkey seems to know
the business, and is a very clever decoy.
I learned during my stay that some of the Wanderobo had once mustered up
courage to attack some Swahili, whom they had murdered, some of the
tribe giving my men the details of their treachery; but, as a rule, they
were much too timid to engage in anything of the sort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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