164 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



social status, and openly looked down on the 

 unregenerated "shenzis" or natives who were 

 still in the kirtle-of -banana-leaves cultural stage. 

 They represented many different tribes. Some 

 of them were file-toothed cannibals. Many of 

 them had come from long distances; for — as 

 philanthropists will do well to note — being even 

 a porter in a white man's service in British East 

 Africa or Uganda or the Soudan, meant an 

 amount of pay and a comfort of living and 

 (although this, I think, was subordinate in their 

 minds) a justness of treatment which they 

 could by no possibility achieve in their own 

 homes under native conditions. As for the per- 

 sonal attendants, the gun-bearers, tent-boys, and 

 saises, as well as the head men and askaris, or 

 soldiers, they felt as far above the porters as 

 the latter did above the shenzis. The common 

 tongue was Swahili, a negro -Arab dialect, 

 originally spoken by the descendants, mainly 

 negro in blood, of the Arab conquerors, traders, 

 and slave-raiders of Zanzibar. This is a lingo 

 found over much of central Africa. But only a 

 few of our men were Swahilis by blood. 



Of course, most of them were like children, 

 with a grasshopper inability for continuity of 

 thought and realization of the future. They 

 would often act with an inconsequence that 



