ALONG THE TRAIL 129 
Nor have I been pestered by mosquitoes. In all 
my African experience I have never had as many 
mosquitoes to contend with as I have had in a single 
night in my apartment on Central Park West. How- 
ever,’one avoids a single African mosquito as one 
would avoid the pest, because that is just what he 
may turn out to be. For six months at a time my 
mosquito nets have remained in the duffle bags. 
In the game country there are millions of ticks, 
but as a rule their worst offence is simply to crawl 
over one. The spirillum tick must be avoided. I 
have never seen one but I have been incapacitated 
and brought near the door of death as a result of his 
work. And when the jigger decides to establish a 
colony under one’s toenails he cannot be too quickly 
nor too carefully dispossessed. 
There are other pests besides insects, snakes, and 
drouth to be guarded against in Africa. One of these 
is fire. In making a camp, it is always wise to burn 
off the ground about the tents for the sake of pro- 
tection. The most strenuous fight I ever had to 
make against a grass fire took place in Uganda the 
day that I killed the big bull elephant now in the 
Milwaukee Public Museum. We had been working 
hard from eleven o’clock in the morning until early 
evening. Meanwhile, camp had been made close to 
our work in a country of bush and high grass. Im- 
mediately surrounding our camp the grass was five 
feet high and very dense and dry. To the east of us 
was a great jungle of elephant grass, a sort of cane 
growing to a height of ten or fifteen feet. For two 
