f Sonaput.

THIS Uninhabited Island
Is off Cape Gardafui,
By the Beaches of Socotra
And the Pink Arabian Sea:
But it's hot--too hot from Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go
In a P. and O.
And call on the Cake-Parsee!

HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived
in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or
the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny
High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively
tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland
and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were 'sclusively
sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the 'sclusivest
sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a greyish-yellowish
catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the 'sclusively
yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair. This
was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them; for
he would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or
clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the
Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them
out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was an
Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish
man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the
two used to hunt together--the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and
the Leopard 'sclusively with his teeth and claws--till the Giraffe and
the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and all the rest of them didn't
know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They didn't indeed!

After a long time--things lived for ever so long in those days--they
learned to avoid anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian;
and bit by bit--the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the
longest--they went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for days
and days and days till they came to a great forest, 'sclusively full of
trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there
they hid: and after another long time, what with standing half in the
shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of
the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew
stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo g