ez was replaced by a headgear made of the beautiful skin
of a Uganda cob. Ostrich and maribou feathers stuck out from the top,
while upon his feet were sandals made from the thick skin of a
waterbuck. A zebra tail was fashioned into a sheath for his
skinning-knife, so that, little by little, he resolved himself back into
a condition of savage splendor. He usually did most of my skinning, and
that being dirty work, I was disposed to be tolerant with the
disgraceful condition of his khaki suit.

Finally we approached civilization once more, and I told Sulimani that
he'd have to clean up, otherwise the girls wouldn't like him. I gave him
half a day off to wash his clothes, and he dutifully disappeared from
society for that period. When he once more turned up he was resplendent
in his clean clothes. As we marched along toward Nairobi he broke his
long silence by bursting into song. For a day or two it was the wonder
of the camp, but he was quite unconscious of it. Music was in his soul
and the germ of love was churning it up. And so he sang as he marched
along, and his thoughts were racing ahead of him to the "sing sing"
girls who wait in Nairobi for returning porters with rupees to spend.

The general average of health in the _safari_ was high. Only one porter
died in the four months or more that we were out. But in spite of the
low mortality there were many cases that came up for treatment. Akeley,
with his long experience as a hunter and explorer, acted as the health
department of the camp. His three or four remedies for all ills were
quinine, calomel, witch-hazel, and zinc oxide adhesive plaster. And it
was simply amazing what those four things could do when applied to the
naturally healthy constitutions of the blacks. He cured a bowed tendon
with witch-hazel and adhesive plaster in three or four days. A white man
would have gone to a hospital for weeks.

There were two common complaints. One was fever, but the fiercest fever
took to its heels when charged by General Quinine and General Calomel.
The other and more common complaint rose from abrasions and cuts. There
was always a string of porters lined up for treatment and each went away
happy with large pieces of adhesive plaster decorating his ebony skin. A
simple piece of this plaster cured the worst and most inflamed cut, and
it was seldom that a man came back for a second treatment. The plaster
remained on until, weeks afterward, it fell off from sheer weariness.