58 SAFARI 



the little mirror to his heart's content, I started to 

 bargain for them. The process was worse than the 

 purchase of a rug in a Cairo bazaar. There is a 

 standard price prevailing in East Africa of a hvmdred 

 shillings; but for formality's sake they asked two 

 hundred and stayed pat at this price from dawn to 

 dawn. It seemed almost as if they enjoyed seeing me 

 swat their flies. With sunup, however, they agreed 

 on the terms which they knew from the beginning of 

 negotiations they would in the end have to accept. 

 Then they drove off, leaving us the five camels and 

 every one of the flies. 



On the trail in the Mt. Kenya district, we passed 

 hundreds of Kikuyus clad in one-piece skins and 

 G-st rings, and surrounded by thousands of bleat- 

 ing goats, on the trek for new grazing groimds. 

 They seemed to travel very slowly, moving on for a 

 little piece, then stopping while their herds nibbled 

 the short bunch grass which formed a scant cover in 

 this dry season for the red clay ground. During 

 these pauses the herdsmen squatted on their haunches 

 by the trail. Such a jabbering and blahing of herds- 

 men and goats you never heard ! 



Once in awhile Osa would signal me to stop 

 and she would converse with them in Swahili, at 

 which she had become more expert than I. This 

 is a sort of African Esperanto understood by the 

 native tribes which roam Tanganyika, British East 



