THE SEFARI 31 
fusing at first. You can only trust your headman and 
keep perpetually noticing things.* Gradually it will dawn 
on you that to be a successful headman implies a most 
unusual combination of qualities. In addition to those I 
have already named, he must be absolutely 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 sefari will not endure. He appor- 
tions 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 favour- 
ites, 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 No. 1 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 the first few days marching, to 
pitch the tents, the moment the sefari comes in. So many 
to go at once for the wood, sometimes these men must go 
more than a mile for it, so many to fetch water. One 
has to trench each tent. ‘There are from ten to twenty 
other tents to be pitched. The men whose duty it is to 
do this are all told off, and, let me say here, that no one 
can, I believe, pitch a tent so fast or so well as these people 
can. I have camped with smart regiments in my early 
days, but neither in England nor in America could any 
of them compare with sefari folk in tent pitching. Smart- 
ness at the job is of vital importance. For instance, only 
yesterday we had to reach a certain water spring, and as 
* The question of food supply is the question above all others, and of the best ways to meet it I 
speak elsewhere. 
