African Game Trails 
287 
sun prostration while in the 
Lado; some of the gun- 
bearers had been down with 
fever, one of them dying 
while we were in Uganda; 
and four of the porters who 
had marched from Koba to 
Nimule had died of dysen¬ 
tery—they were burying one 
when we arrived. 
At Nimule we were as 
usual greeted with hospita¬ 
ble heartiness by the English 
officials, as well as by two or 
three elephant hunters. One 
of the latter, three days be¬ 
fore, had been charged by an 
unwounded bull elephant. 
He fired both barrels into it 
as it came on, but it charged 
home, knocked him down, 
killed his gunbearer, and 
made its escape into the forest. In the for¬ 
lorn little graveyard at the station were the 
graves of two white men who had been 
killed by elephants. One of them, named 
Stoney, had been caught by a wounded 
bull, which stamped the life out of him 
and then literally dismembered him, tear¬ 
ing his arms from his body. In the Afri¬ 
can wilderness, when a man dies, his com¬ 
panion usually brings in something to show 
that he is dead, or some remnant of what¬ 
ever it is that has destroyed him; the 
sailors whose companion was killed by 
falling out of the tree near our Lado 
camp, for instance, brought in the dead 
branch which had broken under his 
weight; and Stoney’s gunbearer marched 
back to Nimule carrying an arm of his 
dead master, and deposited his grewsome 
burden in the office of the district com¬ 
missioner. 
On February 17 th the long line of our 
laden safari left Nimule on its ten days’ 
march to Gondokoro. We went through a 
barren and thirsty land. Our first camp 
was by a shallow, running river, with a 
shaded pool in which we bathed. After 
that we never came on running water, 
merely on dry watercourses with pools here 
and there, some of the pools being crowded 
with fish. Tall half-burnt grass, and scat¬ 
tered, well-nigh leafless thorn scrub covered 
the monotonous landscape, although we 
could generally find some fairly leafy tree 
near which to pitch the tents. The heat 
was great; more than once the thermometer 
at noon rose to 112 0 in the shade—not real 
shade, however, but in a stifling tent, or 
beneath a tree the foliage of which let 
through at least a third of the sun rays. 
The fiery heat of the ground so burnt 
and crippled the feet of the porters that 
we had to start each day’s march very 
early. 
At quarter of three in the morning the 
whistle blew; we dressed and breakfasted 
while the tents were taken down and the 
loads adjusted. Then off we strode, 
through the hot starlit night, our backs to 
the Southern Cross and our faces toward 
the Great Bear; for we were marching 
northward and homeward. The drum 
throbbed and muttered as we walked, on 
and on, along the dim trail. At last the 
stars began to pale, the gray east changed 
to opal and amber and amethyst, the red 
splendor of the sunrise flooded the world, 
and to the heat of the night succeeded the 
more merciless heat of the day. Higher 
and higher rose the sun. The sweat 
streamed down our faces, and the bodies 
of the black men glistened like oiled iron. 
We might halt early in the forenoon, or 
we might have to march until noon, ac¬ 
cording to the distance from waterhole to 
waterhole. 
Occasionally in the afternoons, and once 
