306 IN AFRICA 



been cooking. The people had fled and had been 

 swallowed up in the silent depths of the forest. 



We called and shouted, but no answer came. 

 Some of our porters proceeded to rob the shack of 

 its store of wild honey, but were apprehended in 

 time and were threatened with violent punishment 

 if it continued. Then we prepared to make camp. 

 There was no space for our tents, and trees had to 

 be cut down and a little clearing made. Here 

 the tents were huddled together, clinging to the 

 sloping mountain side. Darkness fell, and then a 

 most wonderful thing happened. 



One of the tent boys who was searching for fire- 

 wood in the darkening forest found a little naked 

 baby, barely three months old. It had been thrown 

 away as its mother, as she thought, fled for her life. 

 The baby was brought into camp, wrapped up, and 

 cared for, and it will never know how near it came 

 to being devoured by a leopard or a forest hog. It 

 was the crying of this baby that we heard, and we 

 assumed that its mother had cast it aside so that 

 its wailing would not betray the hiding-place of the 

 remainder of her family. One can only imagine 

 what her terror must have been to make this sacri- 

 fice in the common interest. 



Now, a three-months-old baby is a good deal of a 

 problem for a safari to handle. In our equipment 

 we had made no provision for the care of infants. 

 We could wrap it up and keep it warm and feed it 

 canned milk, but I imagine the proper care of a 

 little babe requires even more than that. It was 



