DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 505 



them time to look around, and then make the first purchase 

 for the man who had least coming to him; this to avoid 

 heartburnings, as the man was invariably too much in- 

 terested in what he had received to scrutinize closely what 

 the others were getting. The purchase might be an article 

 of clothing or a knife, but usually took the form of tobacco, 

 sugar, and tea; in tobacco the man was offered his choice 

 between quality and quantity, that is, either a moderate 

 quantity of good cigarettes or a large amount of trade 

 tobacco. Funny little Juma Yohari, for instance, one of 

 Kermit's gun-bearers, usually went in for quality, whereas 

 his colleague Kassitura preferred quantity. Juma was a 

 Zanzibari, a wiry merry little grig of a man, loyal, hard- 

 working, fearless; Kassitura a huge Basoga negro, of guile- 

 less honesty and good faith, incapable of neglecting his 

 duty. Juma was rather the wit of the gun-bearers' mess, 

 and Kassitura the musician, having a little native harp 

 on which for hours at a time he would strum queer little 

 melancholy tunes, to which he hummed an accompaniment 

 in undertone. 



All the natives we met, and the men in our employ, 

 were fond of singing, sometimes simply improvised chants, 

 sometimes sentences of three or four words repeated over 

 and over again. The Uganda porters who were with us 

 after we left Kampalla did not sing nearly as freely as 

 our East African safari, although they depended much 

 on the man who beat the drum, at the head of the march- 

 ing column. The East African porters did every kind of 

 work to an accompaniment of chanting. When for in- 

 stance, after camp was pitched, a detail of men was sent 

 out for wood the "wood safari" the men as they came 

 back to camp with their loads never did anything so com- 

 monplace as each merely to deposit his burden at the proper 

 spot. The first comers waited in the middle of the camp 

 until all had assembled, and then marched in order to where 

 the fire was to be made, all singing vigorously and stepping 

 in time together. The leader, or shanty man, would call 



