THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 19 



childlike savages, who have borne the burdens of so many 

 masters and employers hither and thither, through and 

 across, the dark heart of the continent. 



Equatorial Africa is in most places none too healthy a 

 place for the white man, and he must care for himself as he 

 would scorn to do in the lands of pine and birch and frosty 

 weather. Camping in the Rockies or the North Woods 

 can with advantage be combined with "roughing it"; and 

 the early pioneers of the West, the explorers, prospectors, 

 and hunters, who always roughed it, were as hardy as bears, 

 and lived to a hale old age, if Indians and accidents per- 

 mitted. But in tropic Africa a lamentable proportion of 

 the early explorers paid in health or life for the hardships 

 they endured; and throughout most of the country no man 

 can long rough it, in the Western and Northern sense, 

 with impunity. 



At Kapiti Plains our tents, our accommodations gener- 

 ally, seemed almost too comfortable for men who knew 

 camp life only on the Great Plains, in the Rockies, and in 

 the North Woods. My tent had a fly which was to protect 

 it from the great heat; there was a little rear extension in 

 which I bathed a hot bath, never a cold bath, is almost a 

 tropic necessity; there was a ground canvas, of vital mo- 

 ment in a land of ticks, jiggers, and scorpions; and a cot 

 to sleep on, so as to be raised from the ground. Quite a 

 contrast to life on the round-up ! Then I had two tent boys 

 to see after my belongings, and to wait at table as well as in 

 the tent. Ali, a Mohammedan mulatto (Arab and negro), 

 was the chief of the two, and spoke some English, while 

 under him was "Bill," a speechless black boy; Ali being 

 particularly faithful and efficient. Two other Moham- 



