142 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



one time ; but the village is a large one. Both 

 these villages are built in the native style, of 

 plaster and thatch ; have their own headman 

 government under supervision and are kept 

 pretty well swept out and tidy. Besides these 

 three main gathering places are many camps 

 and " shambas " * scattered everywhere ; and 

 the back country counts millions of raw jungle 

 savages, only too glad to drift in occasionally 

 for a look at the metropolis. 



At first the newcomer is absolutely bewildered 

 by the variety of these peoples ; but after a little 

 he learns to differentiate. The Somalis are 

 perhaps the first recognizable, with their finely 

 chiselled, intelligent, delicate brown features, 

 their slender forms, and their strikingly pictur- 

 esque costumes of turbans, flowing robes, and 

 embroidered sleeveless jackets. Then he learns 

 to distinguish the savage from the sophisticated 

 dweller of the town. Later comes the identifi- 

 cation of the numerous tribes. 



The savage comes in just as he has been for, 

 ethnologists alone can guess, how many thou- 

 sands of years. He is too old an institution to 

 have been affected as yet by this tiny spot of 

 modernity in the middle of the wilderness. As a 



Native farmlets, generally temporary. 



