THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



and nine thousand commands in a high dynamic 

 monotone without a single pause for breath. These, 

 supplemented by about as many more, resulted in 

 (a) a bridge across the stream, and (b) a handa. 



A handa is a delightful African institution. It 

 springs from nothing in about two hours, but it 

 takes twenty boys with a vitriolic M'ganga back of 

 them to bring it about. Some of them carry huge 

 backloads of grass, or papyrus, or cat-tail rushes, as 

 the case may be; others lug in poles of various lengths 

 from where their comrades are cutting them by 

 means of their pangas. A panga, parenthetically, is 

 the safari man's substitute for axe, shovel, pick, 

 knife, sickle, lawn-mower, hammer, gatling gun, 

 world's library of classics, higher mathematics, grand 

 opera, and toothpicks. It looks rather like a ma- 

 chete with a very broad end and a slight curved back. 

 A good man can do extraordinary things with it. 

 Indeed, at this moment, two boys are with this ap- 

 parently clumsy implement delicately peeling some 

 of the small thorn trees, from the bared trunks of 

 which they are stripping long bands of tough inner 

 bark. 



With these three raw materials — poles, withes, 

 and grass — M'ganga and his men set to work. 

 They planted their corner and end poles, they laid 

 their rafters, they completed their framework, bind- 



164 



