er. He
has the stamina of a higher type of civilization, and in comparison to
him the lately reclaimed savage is not nearly so dependable in a crisis.

I sometimes suspected that Hassan was not really a gunbearer, but was
merely a "camel man" who was tempted from his flocks by the high pay
that African gunbearers receive. Notwithstanding this, he was
courageous, faithful, willing, honest, good at skinning, and personally
an agreeable companion during the months that we were together. I got to
like him and often during our rests after long hours afield we would
talk of our travels and adventures.

[Photograph: Jumma, the Tent Boy]

[Photograph: Abdullah, the Cook]

One day we stopped at the edge of the Molo River. A little bridge
crossed the stream and I remembered that the equator is supposed to pass
directly across the middle of this bridge. It struck me as being quite
noteworthy, so I tried to tell Hassan all about it. I was hampered
somewhat because he didn't know that the world was round, but after some
time I got him to agree to that fact. Then by many illustrations I
endeavored to describe the equator and told him it crossed the bridge.
He got up and looked, but seemed unconvinced as well as unimpressed.
Then I told him that it was an imaginary line that ran around the world
right where it was fullest--half way between the north pole and the
south pole. He brightened up at this and hastened to tell me that he had
heard of the north pole from a man on a French ship. As I persevered in
my geographical lecture he gradually became detached from my point of
view, and when we finished I was talking equator and he was talking
about a friend of his who had once been to Rotterdam.

The lecture was a "draw." But I noticed with satisfaction that when we
walked across the bridge he looked furtively between each crack as if
expecting to see something.

It was rather a curious thing, speaking of Hassan, to observe the
respect with which the other natives treated his daily religious
devotions. He was the only one in camp who prayed--at least openly--and
as he knelt and bowed and went through the customary form of a
Mohammedan prayer there was never the slightest disposition to make fun
of him. In a camp of one hundred white men I feel sure that one of them
who prayed aloud three times a day would hardly have escaped a good deal
of irreverent ridicule from those about him. The natives in our camp
never dreamed of questioni