WILD MAN AND WILD BEAST IN AFRICA 



15 



Photo by Kermit Roosevelt. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons 

 A WART HOG 



evidently the wit of the Masai camp, who 

 described how the Swaheli would go out 

 with the white man to hunt lions ; how 

 the Swaheli would find the lion, and then 

 the lion would seize him and bite him, 

 whereupon he would cry and call for 

 his mother. Loud laughter greeted this 

 sally, and the gun-bearers retorted with 

 jest about the lions at the expense of the 

 Masai ; how the lions would kill the 

 Masai, but how they could not kill the 

 white man, for the white man killed the 

 lions. As the Masai stood there, the 

 fire lighting up their faces, they reminded 

 me strongly of the pictures of the sol- 

 diers of Thothmes and Rameses by the 

 Egyptian sculptors. They had the clear- 

 cut features and the hard, resolute coun- 

 tenances that you see indicated in the 

 sculptures on the temples that commem- 

 orate the victories of the mighty Egyptian 

 kings over Hittite and Nubian. Those 

 men looked as if they were blood kin to 

 the Egyptian soldiers who 4,000 years 

 ago made the great Egyptian Empire that 

 extended from the upper Nile to the 

 Euphrates. 



Another thing about these natives of 

 East Africa: their clothing was very 

 scanty. In one tribe, the Kavirondo, the 

 men and women literally wore nothing. 

 The curious thing was that those people 

 had extremely good manners. They 

 were very courteous and perfectly at 

 ease — at least the chiefs and the gentle 

 folk — but they did not have any clothes — 

 not a stitch. 



When we struck Uganda we found an 

 entirely different and a very curious little 

 semi-civilization. Right in the midst of 

 this huge sea of black savagery there had 

 sprung up this island of progress, repre- 

 senting the beginning of a very primitive 

 civilization. 



It is very difficult for us to realize 

 how modern our knowledge of mid- 

 Africa is. I can perhaps bring it to your 

 mind by telling you that in 1858 the first 

 successful efforts were begun toward the 

 exploration of mid-Africa and the find- 

 ing out of the source of the Nile, Speke, 

 Grant, and Baker being the men who 

 made the actual discoveries. That is 

 about half a century ago. Just before 



