.303 (100
hard and 200 soft), and 500 12-bore shot cartridges of
say, the 6 and 8 sizes, sufficient for a three months' trip.
Leather bandoliers to carry 50 each of these different
cartridges would also prove very useful.
A couple of hundred rockets of various colours should
certainly be taken, as they are invaluable for signalling
to and from camp after dark. These can be obtained
so as to fire from a 12-bore shot gun or from a short
pistol, and some should always be left with the camp
neopara (Headman) for use as occasion requires.
The rifles, cartridges, and rockets should be consigned
to an agent in Mombasa, and sent off from London in
tin-lined cases at least a month before the sportsman
himself intends to start. It must be remembered that
the Customs House at Mombasa charges a 10 per cent
duty on the value of all articles imported, so that the
invoices should be preserved and produced for inspection.
The hunter's kit should include a good pith
sunhat, a couple of suits of khaki, leather gaiters or a
couple of pairs of puttees, wash-leather gloves to protect
the hands from the sun, and two pairs of boots with
hemp soles; long Norwegian boots will also be found
very useful. The usual underclothing worn in England is
all that is required if the shooting is to be done in the
highlands. A good warm overcoat will be much
appreciated up-country in the cool of the evenings, and a light
mackintosh for wet weather ought also to be included.
For use in rocky or thorny country, a pair of knee and
elbow pads will be found invaluable, and those who
feel the sun should also provide themselves with a spine-protector.
The latter is a most useful article of kit, for
although the air may be pretty cool, the sun strikes down
very fiercely towards midday. A well-filled medicine
chest should of course not be forgotten.
A good field glass, a hunting and skinning knife or
two, and a Kodak with about 200 films should also be
carried. With regard to the last item, I should strongly
advise all who intend to take photographs on their trip
to pay a visit to Mr. W.D. Young on arriving at Nairobi.
He is an enthusiastic photographer, and will gladly
give advice to all as to light and time of exposure; and
as these are the two points which require most attention,
hints from some one of experience in the country are
most useful. I myself am much indebted to Mr.
Young's kindly advice, and I am sure I should not have
achieved much success in my pictures without it. I
made it a practice on my last visit to the country to
send him the exposed films for development whenever
I reached a postal station, and I should recommend
others to do the same, as films deteriorate rapidly
on the voyage home; indeed I had nearly four hundred
spoiled in this way, taken when I was in the country in
1898-99.
