ism and various other diseases. When at
length the skinning process was completed, I waited impatiently for the
return of Mahina, who had by this time been gone much longer than I
expected. It is rather a nerve shattering thing--I am speaking for
myself--to remain absolutely alone for hours on a vast open plain
beside the carcase of a dead lion, with vultures incessantly wheeling
about above one, and with nothing to be seen or heard for miles around
except wild animals. It was a great relief, therefore, when after a
long wait I saw Mahina approaching with half-a-dozen practically naked
natives in his train. It turned out that he had lost his way back to
me, so that it was lucky he found me at all. We lost no time in getting
back to camp, arriving there just at sundown, when my first business
was to rub wood ashes into the skin and then stretch it on a portable
frame which I had made a few days previously. The camp fire was a big
one that night, and the graphic and highly coloured description which
Mahina gave to the eager circle of listeners of the way in which we
slew the lion would have made even "Bahram, that great Hunter," anxious
for his fame.

CHAPTER XIX

THE STRICKEN CARAVAN

Not long after this adventure the permanent way reached the boundary of
the Kapiti Plains, where a station had to be built and where
accordingly we took up our headquarters for a week or two. A few days
after we had settled down in our new camp, a great caravan of some four
thousand men arrived from the interior with luggage and loads of food
for a Sikh regiment which was on its way down to the coast, after
having been engaged in suppressing the mutiny of the Sudanese in
Uganda. The majority of these porters were Basoga, but there were also
fair numbers of Baganda (i.e. people of Uganda) and of the natives of
Unyoro, and various other tribes. Of course none of these wild men of
Central Africa had either seen or heard of a railway in all their
lives, and they consequently displayed the liveliest curiosity in
regard to it, crowding round one of the engines which happened to be
standing at the station, and hazarding the wildest guesses as to its
origin and use in a babel of curious native languages. I thought I
would provide a little entertainment for them, so I stepped on to the
footplate and blew off the steam, at the same time sounding the
whistle. The effect was simply magical. The whole crowd first threw
themselves flat on the