152 THE LAND ‘OF THE LION 
ineficient and expensive Hindus. I learned to honour and 
esteem many of them for what I saw they were — faithful, 
kindly men, living honestly up to the light given them. 
There was an immense porter I had, who carried the 
cook’s bath—this description may be misleading, for 
nothing that I could do, ever succeeded in inducing little 
Peter to wash anything but his hands, but his bath it was 
called, and over it and its contents he exercised a despot’s 
tule. All the odds and ends and left overs, the food for 
the next hurried meal, sugar, potatoes, bacon, and Worces- 
tershire sauce (I may as well stay my hand), all these, 
and numberless others, were ever to be found in Peter’s 
bath. All our cooking paraphernalia, from the big kettle 
to the iron soup ladle, frying pan, coffee pots, baking pans 
for bread and the like, filled high up this immense receptacle. 
The most awkward and unwieldy load in the sefari. My 
big porter carried this load always at the head of the sefari. 
The moment he reached camp and laid his burden down, 
he was off to get wood for the cook’s fire — a purely volun- 
tary act on his part. For the cook’s boys, not the head 
porter, whose rank is high among the men, has this allotted 
duty to perform. He marched all day in a coat that fitted 
his stalwart six feet two inches well. It was a clerical coat 
with regulation high upstanding collar, buttoning tightly 
across the breast. Under this quite non-tropical and very 
English garment, he wore the regulation porter’s sweater. 
This was on the march, and in exceedingly hot weather! 
As the evening fell one of the askaris would take up, 
as usual, his place by my fire. I had four of these native 
soldiers, their height varying from about five feet nine inches, 
to five feet. Short or long, these gentlemen invariably 
turned up clad in that unmistakable clerical coat. Its 
tails dragging on the ground almost, when the little men 
stood up. 
During the heat of the day its owner claimed it. Dur- 
