nd the best of them get the equivalent of from eight to ten
dollars a month. Every white individual has one or more of them; even
the tiny children with their ridiculous little sun helmets are followed
everywhere by a tall, solemn, white-robed black. Their powers of
divination approach the uncanny. About the time you begin to think of
wanting something, and are making a first helpless survey of a boyless
landscape, your own servant suddenly, mysteriously, and unobtrusively
appears from nowhere. Where he keeps himself, where he feeds himself,
where he sleeps you do not know. These beautifully clean, trim,
dignified people are always a pleasant feature in the varied picture.

The Somalis are a clan by themselves. A few of them condescend to
domestic service, but the most prefer the free life of traders, horse
dealers, gunbearers, camel drivers, labour go-betweens, and similar
guerrilla occupations. They are handsome, dashing, proud, treacherous,
courageous, likeable, untrustworthy. They career around on their high,
short-stirruped saddles; they saunter indolently in small groups; they
hang about the hotel hoping for a dicker of some kind. There is nothing
of the savage about them, but much of the true barbarism, with the
barbarian's pride, treachery, and love of colour.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Native farmlets, generally temporary.

[9] White cotton cloth.

XVI.

RECRUITING.

To the traveller Nairobi is most interesting as the point from which
expeditions start and to which they return. Doubtless an extended stay
in the country would show him that problems of administration and
possibilities of development could be even more absorbing; but such
things are very sketchy to him at first.

As a usual thing, when he wants porters he picks them out from the
throng hanging around the big outfitters' establishments. Each man is
then given a blanket--cotton, but of a most satisfying red--a tin water
bottle, a short stout cord, and a navy blue jersey. After that ceremony
he is yours.

But on the occasion of one three months' journey into comparatively
unknown country we ran up against difficulties. Some two weeks before
our contemplated start two or three cases of bubonic plague had been
discovered in the bazaar, and as a consequence Nairobi was quarantined.
This meant that a rope had been stretched around the infected area, that
the shops had been closed, and that no native could--officially--leave
Nairobi. The latter