much more afraid of us than we of them saves us from what might appear
to be very serious menace. Even the wounded left out in the dense bush
have not suffered from these animal pests, but the dead, of course, have
often disappeared and their bleached bones alone are left to tell the
story. One might think that the hyaena, the universal scavenger, would
be as loathed by the native as he is by us whose dead he disinters at
night, if we have been too tired or unable to bury our casualties deep
enough. But, strange as it may seem, the hyaena is worshipped by one
very large tribe in East Africa, the Kikuyu. For these strange people
have an extraordinary aversion to touching dead people. So much so, that
when their own relatives seem about to die they put them out in the bush
with a small fire and a gourd of water, protected by a small erection of
bush against the mid-day sun, and leave the hyaenas to do the rest. So
it comes about that this beast is almost sacred, and a white man who
kills one runs some danger of his life, if the crime is discovered. It
is hardly to be wondered at that the hyaenas in the "Kikuyu" country are
far bolder than in other parts. Elsewhere and by nature the hyaena is an
arrant coward. Here, however, he will bite the face off a sleeping man
lying in the open, or even pull down a woman or child, should they be
alone; elsewhere he only lives on carrion.

The German is not a sportsman as we understand the term, though the
modern young German who apes English ways, comes out to East Africa
occasionally to make collections for his ancestral Schloss. That the
Crown Prince should have reserved large areas for game preserves speaks
for this modern tendency in young Germany. The average German is not
keen on exercise in the tropics, he will be carried by sweating natives
in a chair or hammock where Englishmen on similar errands will walk and
shoot upon the way. This slothful habit leads us to the conviction that
very much of the country is not explored as it should be, and I have