934 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 12, 1908. 
sees that the porters who carry your tent, bed 
roll, ammunition box and personal effects come 
promptly up to the spot. The porters put down 
their loads; those carrying “posho”—rice—the 
food boxes and things not wanted, immediately 
stack them in a pile, and, if rain threatens, one 
of the askari sees that they are covered with a 
large canvas sheet. After putting down their 
loads the porters’ work is not ended. Some of 
them, having been detailed by the head men, at 
once come to your tent and set up the tent poles, 
raise the tent and peg it out. After a while they 
learn to do this very well and promptly. The 
askari see that the pegs are well set and the 
tent ropes not too tight. Meanwhile, your tent 
boy and the porter, specially detailed to help him 
with your work, assisted by the second gun 
bearer, have been setting up the portable bed¬ 
stead and table and your easy chair and stool. 
They spread the floor cloth down in your tent, 
carry in the bed and table, your tin boxes of 
clothes and other sorts of “truck.” Your first 
gun bearer has been drawing the cartridges from 
your rifles and putting them in their cases. 
Later on he and the second gun boy will clean 
them. They must be cleaned every day, and 
sometimes morning and evening. The damp 
here seems to affect rifles very quickly, and a 
gun left two or three days without cleaning 
would rust. 
All this camp bed, table and easy chair busi¬ 
ness seems foolish to Americans who do not 
know this country, but it is necessary. If you 
sat or lay on the ground you would probably 
quickly get fever, chills or rheumatism. 
Other porters are sent out by the head men 
to gather wood for the big fires, others are off 
getting wood for their own cooking fires. One 
or two are at work digging a trench around the 
Bwano’s tent and the pile of goods under the 
cloth. The cook’s boys, who are also porters, 
get wood for his fire, go after water, and help 
him with his cooking. The syces are at work 
erecting a sort of canvas-topped stable for the 
mules, using long bamboo poles which are car¬ 
ried by the porters for the uprights and cross 
pieces. The syce is the laziest animal on the 
face of the earth, and would declare that he 
could not get sticks to make the stable unless 
you fooled him by carrying them with you. 
After a while they will go and cut some long 
grass for the mules to eat in the evening. In 
the morning the mules are not turned out, as 
the wet grass with the dew on it is not good 
for them, but kept in the stable till it dries out 
if you do not use them. 
The porters eat only one big meal a day—in 
the afternoon after all their work is done. As 
far as possible the same men carry the same loads, 
and gradually get to know quite well what to do 
—I mean about pitching the tents, etc. The head 
man sometimes storms around generally, hustling 
those porters who do not do their work quickly 
enough, making others lend a hand at all sorts 
of—to them—uncongenial tasks, and generally 
making himself disagreeable. He has the power 
to inflict bodily punishment, but David, our head 
man, has only had to do it once or twice on the 
trip so far. He is one of the best head men 
there is, I believe, and is absolutely impartial, 
never favoring one man more than another. He 
has had a most interesting and varied career. 
This seems to give a faint idea of some of the 
minor workings of a safari. 
The system of tent pitching is as follows: 
Our three tents are pitched in a sort of triangle 
facing the Bwano’s fire. Back of us, in a half 
circle, come the tents of the askari, the cook 
tents, boys, syces and gun bearers, and back of 
these again in a larger half circle space, the 
porters’ tents. Of course, each tent boy does 
not have a tent to himself. The cook, David, 
and the tent boys go together in one, and the 
gun bearers in another. Our safari has seven¬ 
teen tents including our three. The mules’ stable 
is near the syces’ tent and the location is care¬ 
fully chosen, for a lion is fond of a mule as an 
article of diet. 
You cannot live off the country here as well as 
you can with us. You have to carry a lot of car¬ 
tridges, probably nearly a man’s load at first, 
though of course it gets lighter. With us in 
America a cartridge belt and twenty-five or 
thirty cartridges lasts a trip, but here there are 
so many kinds of game to be tried for, besides 
meat to be shot for your own table and the 
porters, that ammunition goes fast. Sixty hun¬ 
gry porters can get away with 300 or 400 pounds 
of meat in a very short time. Of course you 
are not obliged to give the porters meat, but 
you like to do it if possible. They eat the 
toughest zebra meat or waterbuck with great 
relish. We try to treat our porters well, and 
they seem to like us. But the stories one hears 
of the way the poor fellows are treated by some 
Piasters is pretty sad. 
The meat of most of the game you get is dry 
and tasteless and has to be used in curry or 
mince, and you need a good deal of dried fruit. 
Lime juice has to be carried to put in the water, 
which often tastes and smells badly. You drink 
a good deal of weak tea also. I thought at 
first all this was rather foolish, but now I see 
how necessary it is. Also when you can hire 
a porter for $3.33 and find him for from $1.50 
to $3 per month, it is pleasanter to carry what 
you want and not stint yourself. Blanco. 
California Duck Shooting. 
Los Angeles, Cal., Dec. 1. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: The steady stream of ducks that has 
been flowing into the Southland for a month 
past continues unabated, and in the absence of 
stormy weather, proves the contention that at 
this season the migratory instinct alone will 
bring the birds down from the north, without 
necessarily being aided by final freeze-ups or 
heavy winds, although these send on larger 
detachments of fowl from the northern body. 
A few days ago it came on to blow heavily 
from the northwest, and at times along the sea 
coast the wind approached fifty miles an hour 
in velocity. A large number of sprigs, teal 
and spoonbills took advantage of the easy 
carriage thus afforded and drifted down. After 
a prolonged and lively first flight, the birds 
sought rest on the ocean, where they could be 
seen in great squadrons placidly riding the 
billows and recuperating from the buffetings. 
Bags of twenty to thirty were the rule. 
Teal have been scarce until the present time. 
The weed seeds on which they feed have been 
sprouted by early rains, but they now are here 
in force; in one of my limit strings I had 
about half teal, the rest sprigs and spoonbills, 
which latter are a prime bird now. Both af¬ 
ford splendid shooting; fast, snappy work that 
soon shows the class of a gun pointer, and oc¬ 
casionally makes the best of them sit down and 
laugh at themselves after seemingly ridiculous 
misses, occasioned by the bird bowing or veer¬ 
ing unexpectedly. 
Seeding is being done quite generally now, 
and the ducks are taking advantage of the scat¬ 
tering of barley on the fields, maintaining the 
fat they have brought with them; but one night 
an average of half an inch of rain fell through¬ 
out Southern California, which will soon sprout 
this source of food supply, although the stimu¬ 
lation of planting by other ranchers who have 
been holding off for rain, no doubt will make 
up for a while. 
The clubs all are well fixed for water now. 
Judged by our club, which has killed half again 
as many birds as last year, and that was ac¬ 
counted a good season, the present is a banner 
duck year. Certainly I never have seen pleas¬ 
anter shooting anywhere, or any time, than we 
have been having on the canvasback grounds 
since the opening of the season Oct. 1. There 
has been but one bad shoot, when the ducks, 
hammered three times in the one week, refused 
to stand for further bombardment. Since that 
time newcomers have straggled in between 
shoots, and nearly every open day has seen a 
proportion of new fowl on the ponds. 
About a week ago, we had our annual picnic 
with the widgeon flight. Quite a number of 
these showy, but rather inferior table birds are 
on hand still. They surpass even a spoonbill 
in foolishness. Any kind of stand of decoys 
will deceive them. A boy can imitate their call 
to perfection, and it is surprising to me that 
more hunters do not learn it, for of all the birds 
none more readily responds than the widgeon. 
Mallards, gadwall, canvasbacks, all are scarce; 
but their absence is not noticed with the plenti¬ 
ful supply of other big ducks. 
I had the pleasure of entertaining an old 
Minneapolis acquaintance on our grounds the 
other day, Eugene Parker. Like myself, Mr. 
Parker is an ardent champion of the small¬ 
bore, and uses a 20-gauge gun, chambered for 
a three-inch shell, and shooting 2^2 drams of 
bulk powder behind % ounce No. 7 chilled shot. 
He does fine work with the little gun, but I 
doubt if there is any advantage in that excessive 
charge of shot—more than enough for a six¬ 
teen. The great speed of the load is very 
noticeable to one shooting in an adjacent blind, 
the birds being started down before the crack 
of the gun can be heard at a distance of less 
than 200 yards. Like most good shots using 
small bores, Parker kills his birds uniformly 
clean, and at good range, too. He opened the 
season on Lake Traverse on the border line 
between Minnesota and the Dakotas, and made 
a phenomenal killing, the sport there being the 
best in recent years. The shooters attribute it 
to the heavy forest fires up north driving the 
birds down in unusual force early. 
Edwin L. Hedderly. 
MOTHERS BE CAUTIOUS. 
In selecting a food for the baby don’t ex¬ 
periment. Baby can’t stand much experiment¬ 
ing. Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk 
is acted upon by the infant stomach substan¬ 
tially the same as mother’s milk. For 50 
years it has made glad mothers and started 
thousands of babies on life’s journey with 
health and happiness.— Adv. 
