together with Kalulu, Selim, Simba, and Moto, running and
chasing each other towards the drum stand. There were ten drums, and a
boy for each, ascending in height from the smallest to the biggest drum;
so that the boy who beat the smallest drum must have been about ten
years old, and the boy who beat the largest drum was a sturdy youth of
twenty, or thereabouts.

Pots full of pombe and plantain-wine were ranged a little distance off,
from which the dancers and the singers could regale themselves when they
felt disposed. For the eve of a hunting party's march is considered a
great event, second only to the return of a successful party with plenty
of ivory.

The hunters formed a select circle round the drummers and the pombe
pots; a larger circle, made by about three hundred people--men, women,
boys, and girls--surrounded the hunters.

Each hunter had on a capricious head-dress. One tall fellow was very
conspicuous by wearing a pair of buffalo horns; another had a rhinoceros
horn on the top of his head; another had his head draped with a piece of
zebra skin, which gave him quite a remarkable appearance by moonlight;
one had a zebra crest, which made him appear as if he wore a Greek
helmet; another had a goatskin over his head. Kalulu wore three
magnificent snowy ostrich plumes on his head. Selim wore a turban.
Simba and Moto also wore turbans. One fellow, next to Moto, wore an
enormous black earthen pot on his head; another had a broad, wooden
dish; but it would be wearying to enumerate all the strange things they
wore.

The drummer boys struck up an interlude, which was a verse from the
boatmen's song--the chorus,

We are gliding,
Softly gliding,

seemingly giving them immeasurable enjoyment as they lingered over the
word "gliding." While they were busy with feet and lungs, moving about
in a circle, a sudden silence prevailed;--the great Soltali, the
greatest elephant hunter and doctor of magic of the age, arrived upon
the scene.

A loud murmur of approbation greeted the extraordinary old man. The
most remarkable of all head-dresses was on the head of Soltali, for he
had the skin of an elephant's trunk, the base of the trunk fitting his
head, as if it had grown there, while the trunk, filled with grass, was
stiff enough to stand perfectly erect, though perhaps it was stiff
enough without. The weight of this must have been considerable; but the
ridiculous vanity of men causes them to do strange thi