SEFARI LIFE 149 



cheated toto paid his dues, because I neglected to see his 

 very petty cash, handed over to him, on the spot. When you 

 buy potio, see the loads weighed yourself, before paying 

 for them. Do this on the men's account, quite as much as 

 your own. So many loads mean so many days food 

 for all hands. If you are receiving a fifty pound load 

 when you are paying for a sixty pound, and this is 

 quite common, especially when dealing at outlying bomas, 

 with Indian traders, your men may find themselves 

 seriously short. And the shortage may come when the 

 sefari can least stand it, viz., toward the end of a long 

 trip, when all are heavily laden, and you are in a country 

 where game is scarce. 



Oh, there are so many things I found myself longing to 

 teach these men of mine. Things they surely needed for 

 their well-being, but alas, it could not be. For ages they 

 have gone on their own sad, merry, contented way; living 

 like jEsop's cricket, and dying so young! Going, as they 

 say themselves, to the fece (hyenas). Missionary work 

 has not yet influenced them (the sefari porters) at all. 

 When they are not Mohammedan they are nothing, and 

 their Mohammedanism is the thinnest of veneers. English 

 rule has stopped bloodshed in their home lands, and may 

 be trusted to accomplish, slowly, what English rule almost 

 always has achieved, the betterment of the natives' condition. 

 But at present, unfortunately, there is no denying the fact 

 (though home and local authorities shut their eyes fast to it) 

 that England's coming here has resulted in bringing among 

 comparatively pure native stock a terrible poison that 

 nothing whatever is being done to check or restrain. 

 Another grave danger to the natives' wellbeing arises 

 from the perhaps, sometimes, necessary breaking down of 

 the tribal rule and law. These are his own and he under- 

 stands them, and we take them from him, before he can 

 possibly understand the laws we force him to obey. His 



