THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 13 



porters,* three donkey men, and seven others, including 

 gunbearers, camp men, cook, and head boy. Beside 

 these burden bearers were twenty donkeys equipped with 

 pack-saddles, and twenty-five other donkeys rigged 

 in the native fashion, hired to take their loads of grain 

 polio over the mountains, there to leave them, and then 

 immediately to return. 



We started out with two riding mules, but after about 

 twenty-five or thirty miles of riding we had to pack 

 them. They died; and we walked afoot the rest of 

 the seventeen hundred miles. 



Our men we picked very carefully. Some of them, 

 notably M'ganga, Memba Sasa, Kongoni, and Abba 

 Ali, had been with me on former expeditions. All were 

 personally known either to Cuninghame or myself. 



As will appear in the course of the journals, we en- 

 countered many difficulties. 



I would impress it on my readers as emphatically as 

 I am able that this is not a soft man's country. The 

 "adventurer" who wants to go out with a big caravan 

 and all the luxuries should go to British East Africa. 

 The man too old or fat or soft to stand walking under 

 a tropical sun should stay away, for, owing to prevalence 

 of tsetse, riding animals are impossible. The sport will 

 not like it; but the sportsman will. This country is 

 too dry for agriculture; the tsetse will prohibit cattle 

 grazing; the hard work will discourage the fellow who 



* Extra men to make up for sickness and accident arc absolutely necessary. 



