THE SEFARI 49 
of the train, that is carrying all your party to some wayside 
station. It may be he has so far escaped you entirely, as 
he surely has the ticket collector, and your first sight of 
him, is as fagged out, he totters along, carrying a much 
too heavy load for his little boy’s body, far behind the rear- 
most askari, on some long, hot, marching day. ‘Thus it 
was I first came to know him. 
“Ts he a little fellow following his father?’’ I asked. 
“Oh, no, he is just a toto.” To my ignorance on that 
my first sefari, this meant nothing at all. I was soon to 
learn. ‘The boy on that occasion was on the point of col- 
lapse, and, fortunately, I had determined to walk myself 
at the rear of the column, as the way was long, water dis- 
tant, and the lava rock we were traversing terribly hard 
for all our feet. The boy was not more than fourteen 
years old at most, but had been ill or underfed, for he 
lacked the robustness of totos generally. I halted the men, 
and asked who claimed him, and how he came to be carrying, 
as he was, a man’s load, not less. Five or six big porters 
came up. Still I was mystified, and only after some time 
did I learn that I was supposed to have no responsbility 
for him at all. He was not on the “‘strength”’ of the sefari. 
He was just a toto, hired by the aforesaid five or six to do 
their little jobs around camp, carry water, cook food, 
and carry at least a part of their potio. Had he a father? 
No. A mother? Doubtful. Generally these little black 
mites are orphans. Many such there are, alas! ‘They 
hang around government stations claiming no _ one, 
recognized by none. In some sore strait some helpless 
woman laid him at a stranger’s hut door, to live or die 
as it might be. Many of the totos show too plainly traces 
- of that early disaster. Rickety, consumptive, half-starved 
atoms of humanity, who yet face with an African’s quite 
wonderful cheeriness, the chances of sefari life, because 
it offers them plentiful food and some sort of a home. 
