506 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



out "Kooni" (wood); and all the others would hum in 

 unison "Kooni telli" (plenty of wood). "Kooni," again 

 came the shout of the shanty man; and the answer would be 

 " Kooni. " "Kooni," from the shanty man; and this time 

 all the rest would simply utter a long-drawn "Hum-m-m." 

 "Kooni," again; and the answer would be "Kooni telli," 

 with strong emphasis on the "telli." Then, if they saw 

 me, the shanty man might vary by shouting that the wood 

 was for the Bwana Makuba; and so it would continue until 

 the loads were thrown down. 



Often a man would improvise a song regarding any 

 small incident which had just happened to him, or a thought 

 which had occurred to him. Drifting down the Nile to 

 Nimule Kermit and the three naturalists and sixty por- 

 ters were packed in sardine fashion on one of the sail- 

 boats. At nightfall one of the sailors, the helmsman, a 

 Swahili from Mombasa, began to plan how he would write 

 a letter to his people in Mombasa and give it to another 

 sailor, a friend of his, who intended shortly to return thither. 

 He crooned to himself as he crouched by the tiller, steering 

 the boat, and gradually, as the moon shone on the swift, 

 quiet water of the river, his crooning turned into a regu- 

 lar song. His voice was beautiful, and there was a wild 

 meaningless refrain to each verse; the verses reciting how 

 he intended to write this letter to those whom he had not 

 seen for two years; how a friend would take it to them, so 

 that the letter would be in Mombasa; but he, the man who 

 wrote it, would for two years more be in the far-off wil- 

 derness. 



On February iyth the long line of our laden safari left 

 Nimule on its ten days' march to Gondokoro. We went 

 through a barren and thirsty land. Our first camp was 

 by a shallow, running river, with a shaded pool in which 

 we bathed. After that we never came on running water, 

 merely on dry watercourses with pools here and there, 

 some of the pools being crowded with fish. Tall half- 

 burnt grass, and scattered, wellnigh leafless thorn scrub 



