190 THE GAME OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 



If you already know the country the matter is of course simple enough, but 

 standing in the hot sun and trying to make two savages agree about an unknown 

 place, the name of which and likewise the direction and distance of which have all 

 changed since yesterday, and when you know only a few words of their language, and 

 want to be off following fresh elephant-spoor, you are only needlessly trying your 

 temper. If you are not pressed for time the best plan is to tell the caravan to follow 

 the path and camp at the first water or village ahead. 



I make it a rule with my people that if I have not returned by dusk a party is to 

 leave camp and take the path by which I turned off, or they must travel towards the 

 spot at which I left them, taking with them a lamp if there is one, otherwise they 

 must shout. I almost always arrange in returning, to cut my outgoing tracks, and 

 after a long day following elephants it is a most cheering sight when stumbling along 

 in the dark, and somewhat uncertain of finding camp, to see the light of the search 

 party's lamp bobbing about in the distance, and to know that one will have no more 

 difficulty in finding the way. 



The usual kind of porters are Swahili, Wanyamwezi, and Manyema. The ivory 

 and slave-raiding caravans which used to penetrate in every direction into the interior 

 of Africa used to start chiefly from Zanzibar and the mainland opposite, and were 

 composed mainly of the two first of these tribes. 



The Manyema is a later arrival on this coast, and came from the Congo Free 

 State. In East Africa one is able to obtain the old professional porters of these 

 three tribes, men who have spent their lives carrying loads with different caravans. 

 As such they take pride and pleasure in displaying their prowess in marching 

 distances and carrying heavy loads, and they are points above the porters obtained 

 in other parts of Africa. The professional porter is also an old hand at camping 

 arrangements, such as pitching tents, cutting wood, and generally making things 

 comfortable, and he sets to work directly he arrives in camp to do all that is 

 necessary without having to be told. Very different are the ordinary scratch lot 

 of porters obtained in other parts of Africa, to whom the pitching of a tent or the 

 digging of a trench round it to drain off the rain-water are matters of profound 

 mystery. 



The Wanyamwezi are practically a race of professional porters, than whom 

 there are no better in Africa. Their strength and endurance in carrying loads is 

 wonderful, and, in addition, they are willing, cheerful, and never idle. They have one 

 very aggravating drawback, which often makes their employer forget their many 

 good points ; they are about the most noisy and boisterous individuals it would be 

 possible to find. All .African nativrs I have as yet met are peculiarly and noisily 



