338 THE LAKE EEGIOXS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



or seven years old they carry a little tusk on their 

 shoulders — instinctive porters, as pointer-pups are 

 hereditary pointers. By premature toil their shin- 

 bones are sometimes bowed to the front like those of 

 animals too early ridden. " He sits in hut egg-hatch- 

 ing," is their proverbial phrase to express one more 

 elegant — 



" Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits." 



And they are ever quoting the adage that men who 

 travel not are void of understanding — the African 

 equivalent of what was said by the European sage: 

 " The world is a great book, of which those who never 

 leave home read but a page." Against this traditional 

 tendency reasons of mere hire and rations, though ap- 

 parently weighty, are found wanting. The porter will 

 bargain over his engagement to the utmost bead, saying 

 that all men are bound to make the best conditions for 

 themselves : yet, after two or three months of hard 

 labour, if he chance upon a caravan returning to his 

 home, a word from a friend, acting upon his innate de- 

 bility of purpose, will prevail upon him to sacrifice by 

 desertion all the fruits of his toil. On these occasions 

 the porters are carefully watched ; open desertion would, 

 it is true, be condemned by the general voice, yet no 

 merchant can so win the affections of his men that some 

 will not at times disappear. Until the gangs have left 

 their homes far behind, their presence seems to hang by 

 a thread ; at the least pretext they pack up their goods 

 and vanish in a mass. When approaching their settle- 

 ments — at the frontier districts of Tura and Mfuto, for 

 instance — their cloth and hire are taken from them, 

 packed in the employer's bales, and guarded by armed 

 slaves, especially at night, and on the line of march. 

 Yet these precautions frequently fail, and, once beyond 

 the camp limits, it is vain to seek the fugitive. In the 



