SEEKING ROMANTIC ADVENTURES. 73 



clothes, some one said. To get these men dry-footed was all- 

 important, for we would be out of potio, if we delayed, and there 

 was no game just there. It was a race against time and storm. 



The pipers piped up manfully, the safari came in after a long 

 march at its best pace, and I counted fourteen tents and our three 

 big ones, pitched perfectly and trenched completely so that they 

 could stand any weather, in eight minutes from the time the first 

 bundle was thrown down by the first porter marching on the ground. 



The head man practically decides, till you get to know the men 

 yourself, who needs punishment when (it is to be hoped very rarely) 

 punishment has to be meted out. Disobedience to definite orders, 

 and theft, must be punished at once. But if the influences of the 

 safari are good there are scarcely such things as either disobedience 

 or theft. In six months one man received eig^ht koboko for dis- 

 obedience, and there was no thieving whatever. 



THE TENT BOY. 



Your next ally in the managing of the safari, and your hourly 

 instructor in the way in which you should go, is your tent-boy. 

 There are many excellent tent-boys, wonderful to say. A good one 

 will valet you as well as you have ever been valeted in your life. 

 Indeed, I have yet to discover what a good tent-boy will not do. 

 But I wrote hastily. My boy John, the best tent-boy man ever had, 

 will not do one thing — he will not, under any inducement whatever, 

 make one of a party to beat a swamp or bit a brush for a lion. 



Porters are to the safari what the Macedonian phalanx was 

 to Alexander's armies. There can be no safari without them. 

 Successful sportsmen there have been who depended for transport 

 almost entirely on donkeys or ox-wagon, but as between the donkey 

 and the porter, many a solid advantage rests with the latter. 



You can never tell where you want to go in East Africa. Plan 

 your trip never so carefully, a hundred things may arise which will 

 deflect, if they don't alter, your route. You set out for six weeks' 

 journey. You do not return for four or five months. Freedom of 

 movement is, I am sure, an essential in this land where the unex- 

 pected is forever happening. Now, donkeys pin you down in two 



