DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 439 



sugar, or tobacco, for instance, which meant so much to 

 them. Usually Kermit would take them to the store him- 

 self, for they were less wily than the Indian trader, and, 

 moreover, in the excitement of shopping occasionally pur- 

 chased something for which they really had no use. Ker- 

 mit would march his tail of followers into the store, give 

 them time to look around, 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 in- 

 terested 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 guile- 

 less 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 three or four words repeated over 

 and over again. The Uganda porters who were with us 

 after we left Kampalla did not sing nearly as freely as 



