With Flashlight and Rifle ^ 



But barely recovered from a severe attack of fever, I 

 had just succeeded by great diplomacy (and the surrender 

 of any of my personal possessions that I could do without) 

 in exchanging some old clothes for a few cows, with a 

 chief in Mumia, on the Victoria Nyanza.* It was only 

 by these inducements that I had been able to get the 

 chief to part with his cows. The loss of the calves 

 now meant as well the drying-up of the cows'-milk, for 

 the zelju cattle, which have gradually got acclimatised 

 in Africa — there are no cattle indigenous to Africa ; only 

 buffaloes are native, and the so-called African cattle 

 really come from India — only give milk after the calf has 

 first drunk for some time. The direct flow of mnlk 

 which we are accustomed to in our own cattle is only 

 an adaptation to environment. 



And then, after these icy, rainy nights, the day has to 

 be spent in traversing tracts of country where the grass 

 grows tall and remains wet through and through with 



* I should not now l)e alive to write all this l)ut for the most friendly 

 and unselfish care and attention I received at the hands of two English 

 ofificers — Mr. C. W. Hobley and Mr. Tomkins — on this occasion, in 1896. 

 Those were difficult times in Uganda and Kavirondo. The railway from 

 Mombasa to the Victoria Nyanza had only just been begun, and the 

 political situation in the neighbourhood was full of anxiety. The small 

 and primitive fort of which Mr. Hobley and Mr. Tomkins were in charge 

 dominated the last stage of the caravan-road to the lake. 



I really have no clear remembrance as to how it came about that I was- 

 brought into the fort itself out of my tent, which was pitched close by. I 

 only know that I had been struggling for all I was worth against the fever, 

 and that while in a delirium I rushed out of it, and was with ditificulty got 

 under control by my men. It took weeks of careful nursing at the hands 

 of my hosts to set me right again, and their hands were full at the time of 

 the most important (iovernment business. The Sudanese sentries on the 



672 



