THE SEFARI 31 



fusing at first. You can only trust your headman and 

 keep perpetually noticing things.* Gradually it will dawn 

 on you that to be a successful headman implies a most 

 unusual combination of qualities. In addition to those I 

 have already named, he must be absolutely fair minded 

 as between man and man. He must be strictly just in 

 giving out potio. The little cup of meal must not be 

 heaped or shaken for one, and just dipped into the sack 

 for another. That the sefari will not endure. He appor- 

 tions each man's daily burden. The loads should be 

 weighed before starting from Nairobi. After that there 

 can be no daily weighing. At a glance, therefore, he 

 must know what each must have. He can have no favour- 

 ites, and no enemies. His eye it is that notes the sick man 

 the really sick and detects the lazy and incompetent 

 man. He it is who must decide who shall be relieved 

 of his burden on the march, and among what other reluctant 

 fellows that burden must be shared till No. i can take it 

 again. The multitudinous employments of the camp, 

 as well as of the march, he can alone apportion. So many 

 men are chosen, during the first few days marching, to 

 pitch the tents, the moment the sefari comes in. So many 

 to go at once for the wood, sometimes these men must go 

 more than a mile for it, so many to fetch water. One 

 has to trench each tent. There are from ten to twenty 

 other tents to be pitched. The men whose duty it is to 

 do this are all told off, and, let me say here, that no one 

 can, I believe, pitch a tent so fast or so well as these people 

 can. I have camped with smart regiments in my early 

 days, but neither in England nor in America could any 

 of them compare with sefari folk in tent pitching. Smart- 

 ness at the job is of vital importance. For instance, only 

 yesterday we had to reach a certain water spring, and as 



* The question of food supply is the question above all others, and of the best ways to meet it I 

 speak elsewhere. 



