SEFARI LIFE 149 
cheated toto paid his dues, because I neglected to see his 
very petty cash, handed over to him, on the spot. When you 
buy potio, see the loads weighed yourself, before paying 
for them. Do this on the men’s account, quite as much as 
your own. So many loads mean so many days food 
for all hands. If you are receiving a fifty pound load 
when you are paying for a sixty pound, and this is 
quite common, especially when dealing at outlying bomas, 
with Indian traders, your men may find themselves 
seriously short. And the shortage may come when the 
sefari can least stand it, viz., toward the end of a long 
trip, when all are heavily laden, and you are in a country 
where game is scarce. 
Oh, there are so many things I found myself longing to 
teach these men of mine. Things they surely needed for 
their well-being, but alas, it could not be. For ages they 
have gone on. their own sad, merry, contented way; living 
like A‘sop’s cricket, and dying so young! Going, as they 
say themselves, to the fécé (hyenas). Missionary work 
has not yet influenced them (the sefari porters) at all. 
When they are not Mohammedan they are nothing, and 
their Mohammedanism is the thinnest of veneers. English 
tule has stopped bloodshed in their home lands, and may 
be trusted to accomplish, slowly, what English rule almost 
always has achieved, the betterment of the natives’ condition. 
But at present, unfortunately, there is no denying the fact 
(though home and local authorities shut their eyes fast to it) 
that England’s coming here has resulted in bringing among 
comparatively pure native stock a terrible poison that 
nothing whatever is being done to check or restrain. 
Another grave danger to the natives’ wellbeing arises 
from the perhaps, sometimes, necessary breaking down of 
the tribal rule and law. These are his own and he under- 
stands them, and we take them from him, before he can 
possibly understand the laws we force him to obey. His 
