74, IN AFRICA 



Your shoes or boots are by your bed, all oiled and 

 cleaned, and your puttees are neatly rolled, ready 

 to be wound around you from the tops of the shoes 

 to the knee. Your clean flannels (one always wears 

 heavy flannel underclothes and heavy woolen socks 

 in this climate) are laid out and your clothes for 

 the day's march are ready for you. You get into 

 your clothes and boots, go out of your tent, and find 

 there a basin of hot water and your toilet equip- 

 ment. The basin is supported on a three-pronged 

 stick thrust into the ground and makes a thoroughly 

 satisfactory washstand. The fire in front of the 

 cook's tent is burning merrily and he and his assist- 

 ants are busily at work on the morning breakfast. 

 Twenty other camp-fires are burning around the 

 twenty small white tents that the porters and others 

 occupy, and scores of half -clad natives are cooking 

 their breakfasts. The ration that we were required 

 to give them was a pound and a half of ground corn 

 a day for each man, but in good hunting country we 

 got them a good deal of meat to eat. They are very 

 fond of hartebeest, zebra, rhino, and especially 

 hippo. In fact, they are eager to eat any kind of 

 meat, so that anything we killed was certain to be of 

 practical use as food for the porters. This fact 

 greatly relieves the conscience of the man who 

 shoots an animal for its fine horns. Six porters 

 sleep in each of the little shelter tents which we were 

 required to supply them, and this number sleeping 

 so closely packed served to keep them warm through 

 the cold African highland nights. 



