line extending from the kitchen to the table and then
returning by a different line of march to the kitchen. It was fifteen
minutes passing a given point. Each waiter carried a dish containing one
of the fifty-seven ingredients of the grand total of the rice tafel. You
helped yourself with one arm until that got tired, then used the other.
When you were all ready to begin your plate looked like a rice-covered
bunker on a golf course.

[Drawing: _The Rice Tafel in Java_]

Rice tafel is a famous dish in Java. It is served at tiffin, and after
you have eaten it you waddle to your room in a congested state and sleep
it off. After my first rice tafel I dreamed I was a log jam and that
lumber jacks with cant hooks were trying to pry me apart.

As the recipe for rice tafel is not to be found in any cook book on
account of its length, we give it here even if you won't believe it. To
a large heap of rice add the following:

MEAT AND FISH

Spiced beef, deviled soup meat, both fried with cocoanut shreds.

Minced pork, baked.

Fried fish, soused fish, and baked fish.

Fried oysters and whitebait.

SPICES

Red fish.

Deviled shrimps, chutney.

Deviled pistachio nuts.

Deviled onions sliced with pimentos.

Deviled chicken giblets.

Deviled banana tuft.

Pickled cucumbers.

Cucumber plain (to cool the palate after hot ingredients).

FOWL, FRUIT, ETC.

Roast chicken, plain.

Steamed chicken with chilis.

Monkey nuts fried in paste.

Flour chips with fish lime (called grapak and kripak).

Fried brinjals without the seeds.

Fried bananas.

JUICES

Yellow--(One) of curry powder with chicken giblets and bouillon.

Brown--(Two) of celery, haricot beans, leeks and young cabbage.

One quart of American pale ale to drink during the "rice tafel."

Our cook Abdullah was not the only interesting type in our _safari_.
Among our dusky colleagues there were thirteen different tribes
represented. It was a congress of nations and a babel of tongues. Some
of the porters became conspicuous figures early in the march, while some
were so lacking in individuality that they seemed like new-comers even
after four months out.

[Drawing: _The "Chantecler" of Our Safari_]

Of this latter class Hassan Mohammed was not one.

Hassan was my chief gunbearer, and for pious devotion to the Mohammedan
faith he was second to none. He was the "Chantecler" of our outfit.
Every