m BRITISH EAST AFRICA 
119 
While you perform a five-minutes’ ablution otitside the 
door, the tent behind you has come down as by magic ; 
and even the canvas wash-basin will be whipped away 
from beneath your yet dripping person. Breakfast is 
set out beneath yon shady tree, and ere a hasty meal is 
finished, the whole camp-outfit is ready to move, packs 
completed, burdens assorted and assigned, each man 
knowing his own. The whole operation has been per¬ 
formed with a degree of smartness, method and silent 
efficiency that surprises. Men such as these represent 
valuable material. 
Similar scenes will be observed on arrival at the next 
camping-point. Without a word said, one’s own tent will 
have been erected complete—ground-sheets laid, bed set 
up, table and chairs arrayed in a grove hard by—all 
within a few short minutes. The brushwood over half- 
an-acre has been cleared away with “ matchets.” 
Meanwhile, the cook and his mates have their fires 
alight, and dinner preparing; while already one sees 
a fatigue-party returning with burdens of wood and 
water. 
One morning, however, occurs a hitch. The head¬ 
man desires to see the “ Bwana Khubwa ” (Great Master). 
Silently—since we speak not his tongue—he tallies off, 
with taps of his M’piqui staff, thirty-four burdens, all 
laid out in one straight row. Then he indicates that there 
are but twenty-six porters. A problem to wrestle with. 
Threes into two won’t go, and never would ; and rule-of- 
three helps no more. There are two plans :—(1) To 
repack the thirty-four burdens into twenty-six. This 
proposal is received in speechful silence. (2) To leave 
the surplus stores here in charge of a porter or two, with 
a couple of askaris, till we can send back relay-gangs from 
the next camp to fetch them. 
Long ere the knotty point is solved our chairs and 
breakfast-table have melted into packs, and all its para¬ 
phernalia vanished within the spacious “ cook-box.” 
“ Hurry up,” resounds through the camp. “ All ready,” 
shouts the swarthy Neapara (the only English words he 
