THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



with that ratten meat I saw you lugging around. 

 We'll see." 



So he mixed a pint of medicine. 



*' There's Epsom salts for the real part of your 

 trouble," observed F., still talking to himself, "and 

 here's a few things for the fake." 



He then proceeded to concoct a m.ixture whose 

 recoil was the exact measure of his imagination. 

 The imagination was only limited by the necessity 

 of keeping the mixture harmless. Every hot, biting, 

 nauseous horror in camp went into that pint measure. 



"There," concluded F., "if you drink that and 

 come back again to-morrow for treatment, FU be- 

 lieve you are sick." 



Without undue pride I would like to record that I 

 was the first to think of putting in a peculiarly 

 nauseous gun oil, and thereby acquired a reputation 

 of making tremendous medicine. 



So implicit is this faith in white man's medicine 

 that at one of the Government posts we were ap- 

 proached by one of the secondary chiefs of the dis- 

 trict. He was a very nifty savage, dressed for call- 

 ing, with his hair done in ropes like a French poo- 

 dle's, his skin carefully oiled and reddened, his arm- 

 lets and necklets polished, and with the ceremonial 

 ball of black feathers on the end of his long spear. 

 His gait was the peculiar mincing teeter of savage 



84 



