"Captain Mohammed supplemented my gift with a tin fish-horn, and then the rain-maker's joy was complete. He appeared confident of bringing rain from the ground instead of the sky, if necessary, and did not hesitate to promise a fine day for the hunt. His office has some risk about it, as he is liable to lose his place and head in case he does not make the weather to suit his chief; though he can generally excuse himself in the way I have related by attributing the failure to the influence of evil spirits.
A NATIVE FERRY.
"I am forgetting the hunt while talking about the rain-maker and his performances. We started long before daylight, having sent forward the servants to get breakfast ready on the bank of a small river that lay in our way. Some native boats were there to ferry us over, and our horses were sent to a ford a mile or more up the stream, and then brought down again to meet us at the place of breakfasting. By this plan we made a considerable saving of time, as it would have caused much delay if we had waited in camp for breakfast, and we should have had a needless ride of a couple of miles if we had crossed by the ford.
"We reached the place appointed for the rendezvous, and found hundreds of the natives there in advance of us, though it was only seven o'clock in the morning. There was a small cloud in the sky, and the old rain-maker at once set about showing us how he could drive it away. A few blasts on his tin horn and a dozen shrill notes on the pewter whistle had the desired effect: the cloud melted under the heat of the sun, and the magician looked at us with a proud and satisfied air. What might have happened if the cloud had increased and the day been a wet one, I shudder to think of, as the Shooli chief was bent on giving us a good time, and would have been sadly disappointed and very angry if the weather had been unfavorable.
"There had been no rain for some days, and under the hot sun of Central Africa the grass and ground had become quite dry. This was an important consideration, as the plan of hunting included the burning of the grass over a considerable extent of ground, so as to drive the game in the direction of the nets.
NET HUNTING BY THE SHOOLI TRIBE.