468 



THROUGH JUNGLE AND DESERT 



CHAP. 



pointed at the small quantity which each had received. 

 The Daitcho are most improvident, and I fancy those 

 who had laid in a store for a rainy day could be 

 counted on one's fingers. 



I told Bykender, my friend, and Beri-Beri, one who 

 had achieved an unenviable position through his skill 

 as a poisoner, to come to my camp on the following 

 day and receive a present of cloth. The next day 

 they came, and after I had given to each of them a 

 present, I built a great fire, and destroyed all the am- 

 munition of small caliber. The .577 cartridges, how- 

 ever, I was afraid to burn, and so buried them in a 

 deep hole, which I dug. At dawn on January 9 the 

 rising sun was quite eclipsed by the great blaze from 

 my pile of trading-goods — food in tins, pickles, sauces, 

 desiccated fruits, tea, coffee, soup, broadcloth, silk, plaid 

 shawls, hundreds of yards of American sheeting, hun- 

 dreds of pounds of beads and wire, and in fact, sup- 

 plies sufiicient for an expedition of 100 men journeying 

 two years in the interior of Africa. In twenty min- 

 utes the result of a large expenditure of money and 

 months of care and forethought had ceased to be. I 

 burned up my things, rather than distribute them 

 among the natives, for the reason that, if the natives 

 of Daitcho had become possessed of all of my trading- 

 goods, no caravan poorly equipped, as the poverty of 

 the promoters compels, would have been able to pur- 

 chase food and supplies in that country for years to 

 come. It is true, I might have exchanged my trad- 

 ing-goods for ivory. The natives of this mountain 

 have a certain quantity of this valuable article, which 

 they dole out little by little to traders. But my time 



