In Wildest Africa ^ 



But the times have changed, and so it comes to pass 

 that my people too join in the dance, which lasts late into 

 the night ; that songs of the warriors and the women — 

 " 'Singolioitin loo-'l-muran " and '' Loo-'ngoroyok" — ring 

 out through the darkness, the chorus finding a manifold echo 

 with its oft-repeated ''Ho! He! Ho! Na! He! Hoo!" 

 It is a ''Leather Stocking" kind of poetry, and indeed 

 the redskins of the New World and the Masai here in 

 Dark Africa seem to me alike. The former had to yield 

 to civilisation, the same fate awaits the latter. 



No one had the least anxiety about the night. We 

 quietly allowed the Moran^ to bivouac near the camp. 

 Our march through the wild highlands of the Wasotiko 

 and the Wanandi had deadened our sense of such dangers. 

 We could have no forebodings of the fierce struggle 

 lasting for years that was yet to come between the 

 English troops and those peoples, or imagine how war- 

 like and skilled in self-defence they were. The presence 

 of hundreds of spear- and club-armed warriors in the 

 camp had become an almost daily experience, and great 

 was the surprise of the English officers, later on, when 

 they heard that the great caravan, which I had joined, 

 had had the good fortune to pass through these districts 

 without any fighting. 



For me my serious illness had all at once interrupted 

 the austere and wild delights of this life of the march and 

 the caravan. But I had now become doubly responsive 

 to the joys of travel amid light and air, freedom and 

 endless space ; doubly responsive also to the changing 

 ^ E/ moran = the " young men," i.e. Masai warriors. 

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