SEEKING ROMANTIC ADVENTURES. 71 



It Is a safe rule to allow twenty porters for your personal 

 belongings, not, of course, including men's food or anything else. 



If you wish to travel more rapidly you will take your safari, 

 perhaps, the first stage of the way by the railroad, and since you 

 thus cover in one day what it would take you several days to do 

 marching, you will find the expense comes to about the same. You 

 will find that a month away from all base of supplies is about your 

 practical limit. For remark (and if you remember this it will save 

 you many tedious efiforts after calculation) each man carries sixty 

 pounds of potio, and each eats forty-five pounds each month. A 

 porter is, therefore, able to carry fifteen pounds only for you in 

 addition to his food. 



DIFFICULTIES OF A HEAD MAN. 



A safari of one hundred porters — not including, remember, 

 gun-boys, head man, tent-boys, cook or syce — can carry for a month 

 1,500 pounds over and above their food, and no more. Of course 

 this is all very confusing at first. You can only trust your head man 

 and keep perpetually noticing things. Gradually it will dawn on 

 you that to be a successful head man implies a most unusual com- 

 bination of qualities. 



In addition to those I have already named, he must be abso- 

 lutely fair-minded as between man and man. He must be strictly 

 just in giving out potio. The little cup of meal must not be heaped 

 or shaken for one and just dipped into the sack for another. That 

 the safari will not endure. He apportions each man's daily burden. 



The loads should be weighed before starting from Nairobi. 

 After that there can be no daily weighing. At a glance, therefore, 

 he must know what each must have. He can have no favorites, 

 and no enemies. His eye it is that notes the sick man — the really 

 sick — and detects the lazy and incompetent man. He it is who must 

 decide who shall be relieved of his burden on the march, and among 

 what other reluctant fellows that burden must be shared till number 

 one can take it again. 



The multitudinous employments of the camp, as well as of the 

 march, he can alone apportion. So many men are chosen during 



