CH. XV] NATIVE SHOPPING 481 



diate attendants — had a chance of obtaming the few 

 httle comforts and luxuries — tea, sugar, or tobacco, 

 for instance — whicli meant so much to them. Usually 

 Kermit would take them to the store himself, for they 

 were less wily than the Indian trader, and, moreover, in 

 the excitement of shopping occasionally purchased some- 

 thing for which they really had no use. Kermit would 

 march his tail of followers into the store, give them 

 time to look round, and then make the first purchase 

 for the man who had least coming to him ; this to avoid 

 heartburnings, as the man was invariably too much 

 interested in what he had received to scrutinize closely 

 what the others were getting. The purchase might be 

 an article of clothing or a knife, but usually took the 

 form of tobacco, sugar, and tea ; in tobacco the man 

 was offered his choice between quality and quantity — 

 that is, either a moderate quantity of good cigarettes or 

 a large amount of trade tobacco. Funny little Juma 

 Yohari, for instance, one of Kermit's gun-bearers, 

 usually went in for quality, whereas his colleague 

 Kassitura preferred quantity. Juma was a Zanzibari, 

 a wiry, merry little grig of a man, loyal, hard-working, 

 fearless ; Kassitura a huge Basoga negro, of guileless 

 honesty and good faith, incapable of neglecting his duty. 

 Juma was rather the wit of the gun-bearers' mess, and 

 Kassitura the musician, having a little native harp, on 

 which for hours at a time he would strum queer little 

 melancholy tunes, to which he hummed an accompani- 

 ment in undertone. 



All the natives we met, and the men in our employ, 

 were fond of singing, sometimes simply improvised 

 chants, sometimes sentences of tliree or four words 

 repeated over and over again. The Uganda porters 

 who were with us after we left Kampalla did not sing 



