CHAPTER X 



ON SAFARI 

 A SKETCH OF CAMP-LIFE IX BRITISH EAST AFRICA 



The amenities of camp-life vary with the latitude. 

 Africa, the home of tent-dwellers, aftbrds the ideal ; 

 Northern lands, too often, the reverse. Compare the 

 rigom's of life under canvas in subarctic regions — 

 •especially at high altitudes, as on the reindeer fjelds of 

 Norway, or even in the low-lying forests of Sweden or 

 Newfoundland. There each hunter is accompanied by 

 but a single Achates, whose functions combine both those 

 of gun-bearer by day, of cook and attendant by night. 

 As darkness falls, one returns to an empty camp ; fires 

 must be lit — thouQ-h rain descends in sheets — and dinner 

 cooked ere the day's work is complete. Comfort, or the 

 semblance thereof, is rarely expected, still more rarely 

 found. " I doubled the Horn before the mast," writes 

 my brother, " and that was no bed of roses in the old 

 days of wind-jammers ; but it was no whit more 

 unendurable than a fortnight's real bad weather under 

 canvas on the high fjeld." 



In Africa, on the other hand, tent-life is a normal 

 condition, and the system and custom of camping in 

 the open have been brought to the level of an art. 

 Discomfort and trouble are, or ought to be, unknown. 



Before one's arrival in Africa the whole safari has 

 already been collected, trained men organised to take 

 the field — these being mostly Swahilis. That word 

 " safari,"' by the way, is quite untranslatable. It has 

 no British equivalent, though in daily use on British 

 territory, the usual rendering of " caravan " being equally 



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