ory. To our surprise, however, we soon
found that our boys took Little Simba quite seriously. He was a fetish,
a little god, a power of good or bad luck. We did not appreciate this
point until one evening, after a rather disappointing day, Mahomet came
to us bearing Little Simba in his hand.

"Bwana," said he respectfully, "is it enough that I shut Simba in the
tin box, or do you wish to flog him?"

On one very disgraceful occasion, when everything went wrong, we
plucked Little Simba from his high throne and with him made a beautiful
drop-kick out into the tall grass. There, in a loud tone of voice, we
sternly bade him lie until the morrow. The camp was bung-eyed. It is not
given to every people to treat its gods in such fashion: indeed, in
very deed, great is the white man! To be fair, having published Little
Simba's disgrace, we should publish also Little Simba's triumph: to
tell how, at the end of a certain very lucky three months' safari he was
perched atop a pole and carried into town triumphantly at the head of
a howling, singing procession of a hundred men. He returned to America,
and now, having retired from active professional life, is leading an
honoured old age among the trophies he helped to procure.

Funny Face first met Little Simba when on an early investigating tour.
With considerable difficulty he had shinnied up the table leg, and had
hoisted himself over the awkwardly projecting table edge. When almost
within reach of the fascinating affairs displayed atop, he looked
straight up into the face of Little Simba! Funny Face shrieked aloud,
let go all holds and fell off flat on his back. Recovering immediately,
he climbed just as high as he could, and proceeded, during the next
hour, to relieve his feelings by the most insulting chatterings and
grimaces. He never recovered from this initial experience. All that was
necessary to evoke all sorts of monkey talk was to produce Little Simba.
Against his benign plush front then broke a storm of remonstrance.
He became the object of slow advances and sudden scurrying, shrieking
retreats, that lasted just as long as he stayed there, and never got any
farther than a certain quite conservative point. Little Simba did not
mind. He was too busy being a god.

XXIV. BUFFALO

The Cape Buffalo is one of the four dangerous kinds of African big game;
of which the other three are the lion, the rhinoceros, and the elephant.
These latter are familiar to us in zool