singing as though
mad with the joy of life and sunshine. A little later a shadowy figure
appears by your cot and says, "_Chai, bwana_" which means, "Tea,
master."

You turn over and slowly sip the hot tea, while outside in the clear
morning air the sound of voices grows and grows until you know that
eighty or a hundred men are busy getting their breakfasts. The crackling
of many fires greets your ears and the pungent smell of wood fires
salutes your nostrils. You look at your watch and it is perhaps five or
half past. The air is still cold and you hasten to slip out of your cot.
It is never considered wise to bathe in the morning here.

Your shoes or boots are by your bed, all oiled and cleaned, and your
puttees are neatly rolled, ready to be wound around you from the tops of
the shoes to the knee. Your clean flannels (one always wears heavy
flannel underclothes and heavy woolen socks in this climate) are laid
out and your clothes for the day's march are ready for you. You get into
your clothes and boots, go out of your tent, and find there a basin of
hot water and your toilet equipment. The basin is supported on a
three-pronged stick thrust into the ground and makes a thoroughly
satisfactory washstand. The fire in front of the cook's tent is burning
merrily and he and his assistants are busily at work on the morning
breakfast. Twenty other camp-fires are burning around the twenty small
white tents that the porters and others occupy, and scores of half-clad
natives are cooking their breakfasts. The ration that we were required
to give them was a pound and a half of ground-corn a day for each man,
but in good hunting country we got them a good deal of meat to eat. They
are very fond of hartebeest, zebra, rhino, and especially hippo. In
fact, they are eager to eat any kind of meat, so that anything we killed
was certain to be of practical use as food for the porters. This fact
greatly relieves the conscience of the man who shoots an animal for its
fine horns. Six porters sleep in each of the little shelter tents which
we were required to supply them, and this number sleeping so closely
packed served to keep them warm through the cold African highland
nights.

By six o'clock our folding table in the mess tent is laid with white
linen and white enamel dishes for breakfast. So we take our places. If
we are in a fruit country we have some oranges and bananas or papayas, a
sort of pawpaw that is most delicious; it is a cros