ABDI AND ABDULLAH 351 



like him and often during our rests after long hours 

 afield we would talk of our travels and adventures. 



One day we stopped at the edge of the Molo 

 River. A little bridge crossed the stream and I re- 

 membered that the equator is supposed to pass di- 

 rectly across the middle of this bridge. It struck 

 me as being quite noteworthy, so I tried to tell 

 Hassan all about it. I was hampered somewhat be- 

 cause he didn't know that the world was round, but 

 after some time I got him to agree to that fact. 

 Then by many illustrations I endeavored to de- 

 scribe the equator and told him it crossed the bridge. 

 He got up and looked, but seemed unconvinced as 

 well as unimpressed. Then I told him that it was 

 an imaginary line that ran around the world right 

 where it was fullest half way between the north 

 pole and the south pole. He brightened up at this 

 and hastened to tell me that he had heard of the 

 north pole from a man on a French ship. As I per- 

 severed in my geographical lecture he gradually 

 became detached from my point of view, and when 

 we finished I was talking equator and he was talk- 

 ing about a friend of his who had once been to Rot- 

 terdam. 



The lecture was a "draw." But I noticed with 

 satisfaction that when we walked across the bridge 

 he looked furtively between each crack as if ex- 

 pecting to see something. 



It was rather a curious thing, speaking of Has- 

 san, to observe the respect with which the other na- 



