BLACK SOLDIERS 
437 
CH. XV] 
foot of the bold pyramidal hill of the same name, we 
marched two days west, stopping short of the River 
Koda, where we knew the game drank. Now and then 
we came on flower-bearing bushes, of marvellously 
sweet scent, like gardenias. It was the height of the 
dry season; the country was covered with coarse grass 
and a scrub growth of nearly leafless thorn-trees, usually 
growing rather wide apart, occasionally close enough 
together to look almost like a forest. There were a 
few palms, euphorbias, and very rarely scattered clumps 
of withered bamboo, and also bright green trees with 
rather thick leaves and bean-pods, on which we after¬ 
ward found that the eland fed. 
The streams we crossed were dry torrent beds, sandy 
or rocky ; in two or three of them were pools of stagnant 
water, while better water could be obtained by digging 
in the sand alongside. A couple of hours after reaching 
each camp everything was in order, and Ali had made 
a fire of some slivers of wood and boiled our tea; and 
our two meals, breakfast and dinner, were taken at a 
table in the open, under a tree. 
We had with us seven black soldiers of the Belgian 
native troops, under a corporal; they came from every 
quarter of the Congo, but several of them could speak 
Swahili, the lingua franca of Middle Africa, and so 
Kermit could talk freely with them. These black 
soldiers behaved excellently, and the attitude, both 
toward them and toward us, of the natives in the various 
villages we came across was totally incompatible with 
any theory that these natives had suffered from any 
maltreatment; they behaved just like the natives in 
British territory. There had to be the usual parleys 
with the chiefs of the villages to obtain food for the 
soldiers (we carried the posho for our own men), and 
