SEFARI LIFE 157 



try and dine off your cast-off, greasy boot. I need not go on. 

 But there are some eatable things even in unpromising 

 beasts. 



Rhinos' tails will, if boiled, for five hours, make a fair 

 substitute for ox-tail soup. Kongoni's marrow bones are 

 delicious and unusually welcome since you cannot any- 

 where get fat. Tongue of the rhino, if boiled all day, is not 

 bad, and it is big! Giraffe marrow is the best I ever tasted 

 in my life, and there is enough in one hind leg to furnish 

 a little course by itself for six men. 



The ordinary animals, if their meat is well butchered, 

 will furnish fairly good food. I think the little steinbuck 

 is the best. Then bushbuck, Tommy, and a long way down 

 comes the useful and ubiquitous kongoni, destined, it is 

 safe to say, to furnish you three meals out of four. Lower 

 still in the scale come Grant and reed buck. The men 

 always love zebra, and as you go off hunting, if they know 

 you well and like you, will sidle up saying, " Punda, bwana"; 

 but I have not been able to face it. It is donkey, and 

 smells donkey. 



The birds are fairly good. The great bustard, not an 

 easy gentleman to get, weighs thirty-five pounds or more, and 

 slices of him fry well. The lesser bustard is very good indeed. 

 So is the little spurred partridge. Guinea fowl are plenti- 

 ful and tough. We found it best to reduce them to curry. 

 The breasts make a good curry. But African meat has 

 usually no chance to show how it can serve you. It is 

 almost always handled by natives, and no one takes the 

 trouble to see that it is even kept clean and dry. 



Life has been lived rudely, by the white man, every- 

 where in Africa. (Read Sir Henry Johnstone's book.) 

 He has been and often is, an exploiter, a ruthless destroyer 

 of its people and its game. "Go out and get a bit of meat," 

 the saying is; and "a bit" taken, the rest is left. I have 

 never seen (I may have been unfortunate) meat hung up, 



