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AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
pushing behind. The rickshaw men ran well, and sang 
all the time, the man in the shafts serving as shanty-man, 
while the three behind repeated in chorus every second 
or two a kind of clanging note; and this went on without 
a break, hour after hour. The natives looked well and 
were dressed well; the men in long flowing garments of 
white, the women usually in brown cloth made in the old 
native style out of the bark of the bark cloth tree. The 
clothes of the chiefs were tastefully ornamented. All the 
people, gentle and simple, were very polite and ceremonious 
both to one another and to strangers. Now and then we 
met parties of Sikh soldiers, tall, bearded, fine-looking men 
with turbans; and there were Indian and Swahili and 
even Arab and Persian traders. 
The houses had mud walls and thatched roofs. The 
gardens were surrounded by braided cane fences. In the 
gardens and along the streets were many trees; among them 
bark cloth trees, from which the bark is stripped every 
year for cloth; great incense trees, the sweet scented gum 
oozing through wounds in the bark; and date palms, in the 
fronds of which hung the nests of the golden weaver birds, 
now breeding. White cow herons, tamer than barn-yard 
fowls, accompanied the cattle, perching on their backs, 
or walking beside them. Beautiful kavirondo cranes came 
familiarly round the houses. It was all strange and at¬ 
tractive. Birds sang everywhere. The air was heavy 
with the fragrance of flowers of many colors; the whole 
place was a riot of lush growing plants. Every day there 
were terrific thunder-storms. At Kampalla three men 
had been killed by lightning within six weeks; a year or two 
before our host, Knowles, had been struck by lightning 
