Scribner’s Magazine 
VOL. XLVII MARCH, 1910 NO. 3 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS* 
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AFRICAN WANDERINGS OF AN AMERICAN 
HUNTER-NATURALIST 
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
VI.—TREKKING THROUGH THE THIRST TO THE SOTIK. 
O’ 
June 5 th we 
started south 
from Kijabe to 
trek through the thirst, 
through the waterless 
country which lies across 
the way to the Sotik. 
The preceding Sunday, 
at Nairobi, I had visited 
the excellent French 
Catholic Mission, had 
been most courteously re¬ 
ceived by the fathers, had 
gone over their planta¬ 
tions and the school in 
which they taught the 
children of the settlers 
(much to my surprise^ 
among them were three 
Parsee children, who 
were evidently put on a 
totally different plane 
from the other Indians, 
s an on uty. even the Goanese), and 
ph 0 t 0 LOTmg by J ‘ A1<len had been keenly inter¬ 
ested in their account 
of their work and of the obstacles with 
which they met. 
At Kijabe I spent several exceedingly in- 
* Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 
Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scr 
teresting hours at the American Industrial 
Mission. Its head, Mr. Hurlburt, had 
called on me in Washington at the White 
House, in the preceding October, and I had 
then made up my mind that if the chance 
occurred I must certainly visit his mission. 
It is an interdenominational mission, and is 
carried on in a spirit which combines to a 
marked degree broad sanity and common 
sense with disinterested fervor. Of course, 
such work, under the conditions which 
necessarily obtain in East Africa, can only 
show gradual progress; but I am sure that 
missionary work of the Kijabe kind will be 
an indispensable factor in the slow uplifting 
of the natives. There is full recognition of 
the fact that industrial training is a founda¬ 
tion stone hr the effort to raise ethical and 
moral standards. Industrial teaching must 
go hand in hand with moral teaching—and 
in both the mere force of example and the 
influence of firm, kindly sympathy and un¬ 
derstanding, count immeasurably. There 
is further recognition of the fact that in such 
a country the missionary should either al¬ 
ready know how to, or else at once learn 
how to, take the lead himself in all kinds of 
industrial and mechanical work. Finally 
the effort is made consistently to teach the 
native how to live a more comfortable, use¬ 
ful, and physically and morally cleanly life, 
he new copyright law in effect July 1st, 1909, which imposes 
ner’s Sons. All rights reserved. 
Vol. XLVII.—28 
