2 
African Game Trails 
If 
An oryx bull.—Page 20. 
From a photograph by Theodore Roosevelt. 
soldier type. Then there was another sa¬ 
fari, that of Messrs. Kearton and Clark 
who were taking some really extraordi¬ 
nary photographs of birds and game. Fi¬ 
nally, Governor and Mrs. Jackson arrived 
from a trip they had been making round 
Kenia; and I was much pleased to be able 
to tell the Governor, who had helped me 
in every way, about my bull elephant, and 
to discuss with him some of the birds we 
had seen and the mammals we had trapped. 
A great ingowa, a war-dance of the na¬ 
tives, was held in his honor, and the sight 
was, as always, one of interest and of a 
certain fascination. There was an Indian 
trader at Neri from whom we had obtained 
donkeys to carry to our elephant camp 
“posho,” or food for the porters. He an¬ 
nounced that they were all in readiness in a 
letter to Cuninghame, which was meant to 
be entirely respectful, but which sounded 
odd, as it was couched in characteristic 
Baboo English. The opening lines ran: 
“Dear K-ham, the donkeys 
are altogether deadly.” 
At last fifty Kikuyus as¬ 
sembled—they are not able 
to carry the loads of regu¬ 
lar Swahili porters—and I 
started that moment, though 
it was too late in the after¬ 
noon to travel more than 
three or four miles. The 
Kikuyus were real savages, 
naked save for a din gy 
blanket, usually carried 
round the neck. They 
formed a picturesque safari; 
but it was difficult to make 
the grasshopper-like creat¬ 
ures take even as much 
thought for the future as the 
ordinary happy-go-lucky 
porters take. At night if it 
rained they cowered under 
the bushes in drenched and 
shivering discomfort; and 
yet they had to be driven to 
make bough shelters for 
themselves. Once these 
shelters were up, and a little 
fire kindled at the entrance 
of each, the moping, spirit¬ 
less wretches would speedily 
become transformed into be¬ 
ings who had lost all remem¬ 
brance of ever having been wet or cold. 
After their posho had been distributed and 
eaten they would sit, huddled and cheerful, 
in their shelters, and sing steadily for a 
couple of hours. Their songs were much 
wilder than those of the regular porters, and 
were often warlike. Occasionally, some 
“shanty man,” as he would be called on 
shipboard, improvised or repeated a kind of 
story in short sentences or strophes; but the 
main feature of each song was the endless 
repetition of some refrain, musically chant¬ 
ed in chorus by the whole party. This repe¬ 
tition of a short sentence or refrain is a 
characteristic of many kinds of savage mu¬ 
sic; I have seen the Pawnees grow almost 
maddened by then* triumph song, or victory 
song, which consisted of nothing whatever 
but the fierce, barking, wolf-like repetition 
of the words, “In the morning the wolves 
feasted.” 
Our first afternoon’s march was unevent¬ 
ful ; but I was amused at one of our porters 
