74 
IN AFRICA 
Your shoes or boots are by your bed, all oiled and 
cleaned, and your puttees are neatly rolled, ready 
to be wound around you from the tops of the shoes 
to the knee. Your clean flannels (one always wears 
heavy flannel underclothes and heavy woolen socks 
in this climate) are laid out and your clothes for 
the day’s march are ready for you. You get into 
your clothes and boots, go out of your tent, and find 
there a basin of hot water and your toilet equip¬ 
ment. The basin is supported on a three-pronged 
stick thrust into the ground and makes a thoroughly 
satisfactory washstand. The fire in front of the 
cook’s tent is burning merrily and he and his assist¬ 
ants are busily at work on the morning breakfast. 
Twenty other camp-fires are burning around the 
twenty small white tents that the porters and others 
occupy, and scores of half-clad natives are cooking 
their breakfasts. The ration that we were required 
to give them was a pound and a half of ground corn 
a day for each man, but in good hunting country we 
got them a good deal of meat to eat. They are very 
fond of hartebeest, zebra, rhino, and especially 
hippo. In fact, they are eager to eat any kind of 
meat, so that anything we killed was certain to be of 
practical use as food for the porters. This fact 
greatly relieves the conscience of the man who 
shoots an animal for its fine horns. Six porters 
sleep in each of the little shelter tents which we were 
required to supply them, and this number sleeping 
so closely packed served to keep them warm through 
the cold African highland nights. 
