PREPARATION FOR A JOURNEY z7 



does a man consume in a day ? How long will 

 a tin of jam last, or a pound of tea ? These are 

 questions that sound simple enough, but how many- 

 people can answer them ? Then there is the 

 momentous question of cooking-pots and pans. My 

 cook enumerated a long list of things that he said 

 were necessary. I divided the score by two, and 

 the result was happily approximately correct. When 

 all these things have been collected together, comes 

 the most difficult task of dividing them into 

 6o-pound loads, and so arranging them that one 

 has to open as few loads as possible at each 

 camping-place — not to open one box for the flour, 

 another for the salt, another for the tea, and so on. 

 Tent ropes and pegs must be looked at to see that 

 they have not been devoured by white ants, and 

 buckets and water-bottles to make sure that they do 

 not leak. 



Meantime there was a cook and a boy and porters 

 to be engaged. Applicants for the first two places 

 presented themselves in dozens within an hour or 

 two of my arrival, but as I had no knowledge of 

 the Swahili or Luganda tongues, I found it difficult 

 to make a choice from among so many. So I 

 decided that the first duty of a boy was to call one 

 early in the morning. In the first six days six 

 successive boys failed to call me within an hour 

 of the appointed time, but on the seventh morning 

 one Maliko, the probationer of the day, called me 

 at four o'clock instead of at five, and won the 



