48 SAFARI 



favorite floating island pudding and in serving hors 

 d'ceuvres on special occasions. His pleasure came in 

 tempting our appetites, not in the dishes themselves; 

 for when he had cleared away the most sumptuous 

 meal, he would squat down on his haunches and 

 reverting to type, eat his ground posho and water 

 with only an occasional bit of oxen steak. Omara, 

 his helper refused even this, saying that God had 

 made the oxen, as well as everything that breathed; 

 brothers to man; therefore it was wrong to kill and 

 eat them. 



Even when our larders later became depleted, we 

 had delicacies from the wild. Osa wotild go out and 

 come in with armsful of asparagus from the forest. 

 Here, too, she found a delectable wild spinach, wild 

 plums, rather bitter raw but delicious as jam; a 

 black cranberry, very sweet and good ; a native coffee, 

 with great beans; a fruit resembling apricots with 

 seeds like those of apples — -sl favorite with elephants ; 

 and trees oozing with brown honey. 



It was, in short, a Robinson Crusoe life; or, since 

 we were so many, an existence like that of the Swiss 

 Family Robinson; with modem adaptations, of 

 course, in our cars, machine shops, developing tanks, 

 and wiring. Otherwise we were primitive enough. 

 And the settlement, when finished after many moons 

 of labor, was picturesque with its collection of over- 

 hanging yellow thatches ; the laboratory as the thirty- 



