- sage of my stretcher, enlisting the services of a chief
with his people to cut a road in from the shambas to meet our porters who were working outward.
One day when I was convalescing, Bill called on a porter to perform some service about my tent. The porter refused to come. Bill went out to "interview" him. The porter was twice as large as Bill—there was a little scuffle, and Bill came right back and did the work himself. Then he went over to the doctor's tent and conducted him out to where he had left the porter. It took the doctor a half hour to bring the porter to. Then the other porters came up in a body and said that Bill must go or they would all go. I told them that the first of their number who complained of Bill or refused to do his bidding would get "twenty-five." The average black boy would have taken advantage of the situation created by these victories—not so with Bill. After that, whenever he had occasion to pass an order to a porter, he always did it through the headman.
Perhaps I should explain at this point just what the normal personnel of a safari in British East Africa is. First, there is the headman, who is supposed to be in charge of the whole show, excepting the gun-bearers and tent boys, who are the personal servants and under the immediate direction of their masters. The askaris are soldiers who are armed and whose duties consist of the guarding of the camp at night and looking after the porters on the march. There is one askari to from ten to twenty porters. The cook and his assistant or assistants, the number of whom is
