®OPLEA FOR’ THE! NATIVE 387 
in Uganda and British Central Africa. In British Central 
Africa things are dearer, so he gets his potio and ten rupees 
a month. 
So much for the African porter. The longer I knew 
him, the more I liked and honoured him. He is far indeed 
from being a hopelessly “lazy savage.” I learned to 
respect him as a man who sets himself to earn the money he 
is paid, who gives what he promises to give and gives it, 
on the whole, ungrudgingly. But I grew to wonder increas- 
ingly at the pent-up stores of energy within him. My 
porters recuperated quickly, even when they were very 
severely exhausted at the close of a long and possibly 
waterless march. No white man’s head or shoulders 
could possibly have endured the strain laid on theirs. 
They would lie down for a few moments —and a few 
moments seemed enough — then, without orders, in the 
vast majority of cases, the remaining work was undertaken, 
and that work was considerable. Much tent pitching, a 
hard and difficult task, large piles of wood to be cut, with 
worse than indifferent axes and pangas (native knives), a 
platform of logs and scrub to be laid for the loads so as 
to keep them above the damp ground, and be it remem- 
bered there is no such thing as soft wood in Africa, for 
the softest wood there is much tougher than our oak. When 
cut, too, the wood had often to be carried for a distance of 
more than a mile; then there are bomas of thorn scrub for 
the mules and donkeys, and lastly the work to be done 
for themselves, tent-pitching, wood-gathering, and cooking. 
The day had begun at 4.30 a. M., the big meal of the day 
would not be over till seven at night, and surely the sefari 
has done enough to‘use up its energy. But no, far from it: 
in the centre of the camp burns the bwana’s fire, where 
the askari stand on guard ina wide horse-shoe curve around 
it, the porters’ fires are lit, and little yellow spires of flame 
rise with scarcely a waver heavenward in the windless, 
