Lake Tanganyika 



of the two men, after I had sent them off collecting. They 

 may have eaten the cyanide — thinking it was jam — for all 

 I know (and I hope so), but I have a shrewd idea that the 

 explanation lies in the attraction fishing has for all natives. 

 They were in all probability induced by their smaller relatives 

 to use or lend out my butterfly nets to catch whitebait in 

 the harbour, result : torn nets and bad consciences. On 

 this occasion I took good care to get the boys away from 

 their homes before I gave my nets and bottles over to their 

 tender care. They were Swahili natives and an unpromising 

 medium for inoculation with the collecting germ. After 

 many weeks' patient training I had two passable collectors 

 and then only on the ticket system, i.e. giving them a ticket 

 with thirty spaces, one space for each day of the month, 

 so 'that on days that they worked well they would have one 

 space marked, and on days when they were lazy or spoilt 

 the insects by careless handling no marks at all. So we 

 got along, but I never made anything of the other two, and 

 just when the two best boys were becoming thoroughly 

 proficient, they wanted to go back home and I had to set 

 about instructing others. The patience of entomologists is 

 proverbial, of course, but still there are limits and I often 

 reached it with my " bug-boys." 



Not finding much of interest entomologically at Gottorp, 

 and our wild Wahd porters having turned up from Kasulu 

 that evening, we prepared to set out the following day for 

 our long march to Lake Kivu and the land of the Pigmies. 

 In the morning I lined up our fifty porters for their rations 

 (or in the Swahili language " posho ") and hked the look 

 of them at once. Like my old friends the Awemba of south 

 Tanganyika, whom the Wahd closely resemble, they were 



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