of course, we have
trekked through the finest game preserves in the world, including the
Crown Prince's special Elephant Forests) is to ask for trouble from the
Askari patrol that is just waiting for the sound of a rifle shot to
bring him hot foot after us. So the sable antelope might easily be
bought by very unpleasant sacrifice. All shooting at game, even for
food, except on most urgent occasions, is strictly forbidden, for a
rifle shot may be as misleading to our own patrols and outposts as it
would be inviting to the Hun.

This war had led us from the comparative civilisation of German
plantations to the wildest, swampiest region of Equatorial Africa. After
rain the roads tell the story of the wild game, for in the mud are the
big slot marks of elephants and lions and all the denizens of the bush.
But at the bases and back in British East Africa where there are no
lurking German Askari patrols, many fellows have had the time of their
lives with the big game. Afternoon excursions to the wide plains and
their bush where the wild game hide and graze.

We are often asked how we manage to avoid the lions and the other wild
beasts of the country that come to visit the thorn bomas that protect
our transport cattle at night? Strange as it may seem, we do not have to
avoid them, for they do not come for us or for the natives, nor yet for
the live cattle so much as for the dead mules and oxen. I dare say there
have never been so many white and black men in a country infested with
lions who have suffered so little from the beasts of the field as we
have.

In the first place, the advance of so great an army has frightened away
a very large number of the wild game. All that have stayed are the
larger carnivora, like the hyaena or the lion. And they are a positive
Godsend to us. For instead of attacking our sentries and patrols at
night, as you might imagine, they are the great scavengers and camp
cleaners of the country. Of vultures there are too few in this land,
probably because the blind bush robs them of the chance of spotting
their prey. Were it not for lions and hyaenas, we should be in a bad
way. For they come to eat all our dead animals, all the wastage of this
army, the tribute our transport animals are paying to fly and to
horse-sickness. For in spite of fairy tales about lions one must believe
the unromantic truth that a lion prefers a dead ox to a man, and a black
man to a white one. So you will not be surprised w