THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE 
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childlike savages, who have borne the burdens of so many 
masters and employers hither and thither, through and 
across, the dark heart of the continent. 
Equatorial Africa is in most places none too healthy a 
place for the white man, and he must care for himself as he 
would scorn to do in the lands of pine and birch and frosty 
weather. Camping in the Rockies or the North Woods 
can with advantage be combined with ‘‘roughing it’"; and 
the early pioneers of the West, the explorers, prospectors, 
and hunters, who always roughed it, were as hardy as bears, 
and lived to a hale old age, if Indians and accidents per¬ 
mitted. But in tropic Africa a lamentable proportion of 
the early explorers paid in health or life for the hardships 
they endured; and throughout most of the country no man 
can long rough it, in the Western and Northern sense, 
with impunity. 
At Kapiti Plains our tents, our accommodations gener¬ 
ally, seemed almost too comfortable for men who knew 
camp life only on the Great Plains, in the Rockies, and in 
the North Woods. My tent had a fly which was to protect 
it from the great heat; there was a little rear extension in 
which I bathed—a hot bath, never a cold bath, is almost a 
tropic necessity; there was a ground canvas, of vital mo¬ 
ment in a land of ticks, jiggers,‘and scorpions; and a cot 
to sleep on, so as to be raised from the ground. Quite a 
contrast to life on the round-up! Then I had two tent boys 
to see after my belongings, and to wait at table as well as in 
the tent. Ali, a Mohammedan mulatto (Arab and negro), 
was the chief of the two, and spoke some English, while 
under him was “Bill,” a speechless black boy; Ali being 
particularly faithful and efficient. Two other Moham- 
