THE SEFARI 21 



masters or, if they escaped from them, were murdered 

 by unfriendly tribes, who naturally strove in every way 

 they could to prevent the inroads of caravans whose object 

 was generally to steal their ivory or capture them. 



East Africa till very lately was in an awful plight. 

 The curse of age-long slavery and perpetual wars and 

 cattle raiding among the tribes turned what should have 

 been a prosperous country into the darkest and most 

 hopeless of lands, where every man distrusted and feared 

 his fellow. There was no rule, no central authority. The 

 strong consumed the weak. A region where rapine, 

 cruelty, and bloodshed perpetually reigned. The distance 

 from one inhabited oasis to another was often great. Vast 

 tracts had been depopulated by native wars, pestilence or 

 the slave trade. Sefaris, therefore, whether they were made 

 up as were Somalis or Swahili expeditions for purposes 

 of trade, or for discovery or sport, had to be large a 

 march through much of the country meant a little war, 

 and every porter carried a gun in addition to his pack. 



So it came to pass often, that, willingly or unwillingly, 

 almost every sefari's progress tended but to increase the 

 native distrust and discontent, and to add to the misery 

 of the country it passed through. 



The food question was ever the burning one, for 

 men carrying trading goods into the interior could not 

 carry a sufficient supply of food as well. The limit of 

 human endurance is reached at sixty pounds the man. 

 It takes a stout porter to carry that, day after day in the 

 sun. Now that same porter eats in one month forty-five 

 pounds of his load, so it is at once evident he cannot carry 

 food and other things as well. (I will here mention a fact 

 that illustrates the difficulties of African travel far better 

 than pages of explanation. Till the Uganda railroad was 

 built, the regular cost per ton to carry goods from Mom- 

 bassa to Lake Victoria, almost six hundred miles, was 



