begins to do a little figuring on his own account.

My experience was very much as above. Three of us went out for eleven
weeks with what was considered a very "modest" safari indeed. It
comprised one hundred and eighteen men. My fifth and last trip, also
with two companions, was for three months. Our personnel consisted, all
told, forty men.

In essentials the Englishman is absolutely right. One cannot camp in
Africa as one would at home. The experimenter would be dead in a month.
In his application of that principle, however, he seems to the American
point of view to overshoot. Let us examine his proposition in terms of
the essentials-food, clothing, shelter. There is no doubt but that a man
must keep in top condition as far as possible; and that, to do so, he
must have plenty of good food. He can never do as we do on very hard
trips at home: take a little tea, sugar, coffee, flour, salt, oatmeal.
But on the other hand, he certainly does not need a five-course dinner
every night, nor a complete battery of cutlery, napery and table ware to
eat it from. Flour, sugar, oatmeal, tea and coffee, rice, beans, onions,
curry, dried fruits, a little bacon, and some dehydrated vegetables
will do him very well indeed-with what he can shoot. These will pack in
waterproof bags very comfortably. In addition to feeding himself well,
he finds he must not sleep next to the ground, he must have a hot bath
every day, but never a cold one, and he must shelter himself with a
double tent against the sun.

Those are the absolute necessities of the climate. In other words, if
he carries a double tent, a cot, a folding bath; and gives a little
attention to a properly balanced food supply, he has met the situation.

If, in addition, he takes canned goods, soda siphons, lime juice, easy
chairs and all the rest of the paraphernalia, he is merely using a basic
principle as an excuse to include sheer luxuries. In further extenuation
of this he is apt to argue that porters are cheap, and that it costs
but little more to carry these extra comforts. Against this argument, of
course, I have nothing to say. It is the inalienable right of every
man to carry all the luxuries he wants. My point is that the average
American sportsman does not want them, and only takes them because he is
overpersuaded that these things are not luxuries, but necessities. For,
mark you, he could take the same things into the Sierras or the North-by
paying; but he doesn't.