THE SEFARI a 
masters or, if they escaped from them, were murdered 
by unfriendly tribes, who naturally strove in every way 
they could to prevent the inroads of caravans whose object 
was generally to steal their ivory or capture them. 
East Africa till very lately was in an awful plight. 
The curse of age-long slavery and perpetual wars and 
cattle raiding among the tribes turned what should have 
been a prosperous country into the darkest and most 
hopeless of lands, where every man distrusted and feared 
his fellow. There was no rule, no central authority. The 
strong consumed the weak. A region where rapine, 
cruelty, and bloodshed perpetually reigned. ‘The distance 
from one inhabited oasis to another was often great. Vast 
tracts had been depopulated by native wars, pestilence or 
the slave trade. Sefaris, therefore, whether they were made 
up — as were Somalis or Swahili expeditions for purposes 
of trade, or for discovery or sport, had to be large —a 
march through much of the country meant a little war, 
and every porter carried a gun in addition to his pack. 
So it came to pass often, that, willingly or unwillingly, 
almost every sefari’s progress tended but to increase the 
native distrust and discontent, and to add to the misery 
of the country it passed through. 
The food question was ever the burning one, for 
men carrying trading goods into the interior could not 
carry a sufficient supply of food as well. The limit of 
human endurance is reached at sixty pounds the man. 
It takes a stout porter to carry that, day after day in the 
sun. Now that same porter eats in one month forty-five 
pounds of his load, so it is at once evident he cannot carry 
food and other things as well. (I will here mention a fact 
that illustrates the difficulties of African travel far better 
than pages of explanation. ‘Till the Uganda railroad was 
built, the regular cost per ton to carry goods from Mom- 
bassa to Lake Victoria, almost six hundred miles, was 
