ch. i] ADVENTUROUS LIVES 9 
think much of the race problem at home, it is pleasant 
to be made to realize in vivid fashion the progress the 
American negro has made by comparing him with the 
negro who dwells in Africa untouched, or but lightly 
touched, by white influence. 
In such a community as one finds in Mombasa or 
Nairobi one continually runs across quiet, modest men 
whose lives have been fuller of wild adventure than the 
life of a Viking leader of the ninth century. One of the 
public officials whom I met at the Governor’s table was 
Major Hinde. He had at one time served under the 
Government of the Congo Free State; and at a crisis 
in the fortunes of the State, when the Arab slave-traders 
bade fair to get the upper hand, he was one of the eight 
or ten white men, representing half as many distinct 
nationalities, who overthrew the savage soldiery of the 
slave-traders and shattered beyond recovery the Arab 
power. They organized the wild pagan tribes just as 
their Arab foes had done; they fought in a land where 
deadly sickness struck down victor and vanquished with 
ruthless impartiality; they found their commissariat as 
best they could wherever they happened to be; often 
they depended upon one day’s victory to furnish the 
ammunition with which to wage the morrow’s battle ; 
and ever they had to be on guard no less against the 
thousands of cannibals in their own ranks than against 
the thousands of cannibals in the hostile ranks, for, 
on whichever side they fought, after every battle the 
warriors of the man-eating tribes watched their chance 
to butcher the wounded indiscriminately and to feast 
on the bodies of the slain. 
The most thrilling book of true lion-stories ever 
written is Colonel Patterson’s “ The Man-eaters of 
Tsavo.” Colonel Patterson was one of the engineers 
