were fairly plentiful, and that meant lions. They did no damage,
but they kept us awake; and one night near the first village we came
to, where our porters all quartered themselves with the villagers for
sake of the change from their crowded tents, the fires that we made
went out, and five lions (we counted their foot-prints afterward) came
and sniffed around the pegs of the tent in which Fred and I lay, we
lying still and shamming dead. To have lifted a rifle in the darkness
and tried to shoot would have been suicide.

Then there were trees we passed among--baobabs, whose youngest tendrils
swung to and fro in the evening breeze like snakes head-downward. And
taking advantage of that natural provision, twenty-foot pythons swung
among them, in coloring and marking aping the habit of the tree. One
of them knocked Fred's helmet off as he marched beside me. They are
easy to kill. He shot it, and it dropped like a stone, three hundred
pounds or more, but the sweat ran down Fred's face for half an hour
afterward.

(Since then I have seen pythons kill their prey a score of times. I
never once saw one kill by crushing. The end of their nose is as hard
as iron, and they strike a terrific blow with that, so swift that the
eye can not follow it. Then, having killed by striking, they crawl
around their prey and crush it into shape for swallowing.)

But the worst of the journey was the wayside villages--dirty beyond
belief, governed in a crude way by a headman whom the Germans honored
with the title of sultani. These wayside beggars (for they were no
better)--destitute paupers, taxed until their wits failed them in the
effort to scrape together surplus enough out of which to pay--were
supplied with a mockery of a crown apiece, a thing of brass and
imitation plush that they wore in the presence of strangers. To add to
the irony of that, the law of the land permitted any white man passing
through to beat them, with as many as twenty-five lashes, if they
failed to do his bidding.

On arriving at such a village, the first thing we did was to ask for
milk. If they had any they brought it, not daring to refuse for fear
lest a German sergeant-major should be sent along to wreak vengeance
later. But it was always too dirty to drink.

That ceremony over, the headman retired and the village sick were
brought for our inspection. Gruesome sores, running ulcers, wounds and
crippled limbs were stripped and exposed to our most r