on not to sling your kind o' lingo.
Milk--never heard o' such stuff--cows in them parts don't give milk!
Food? They're starving. It isn't overeating makes their bellies big,
it's wind. Porters? All the young men are lame, an' old 'uns too old,
an' the middle 'uns too middle-aged--an' who ever heard of a native
woman workin' anyhow. Who tills the mtama patch, then? It don't get
tilled, or else the women only 'tend to it at tillin' time. Nobody
works at anythin' about the time you come on the scene, for work ain't
moral, pleasin' nor profitable, an' there you are! As for the trail
ahead, lions an' cannibals are the two mildest kind of calamities they
guarantee you'll meet."

"You don't have to believe them," I argued. "No man in his senses
would start without porters of his own--"

"Who never run away, an' never, oh never go lame o' course!" said Brown.

"Porters enough and to spare," I continued. "And food for a month or
two--"

"How are you going to get away right under their noses with food for a
month or two?" demanded Brown. "You've got to live off the country
after a certain distance. The further you go, the worse for you, for
they'll sell you nothing and give you less. By and by your porters get
tipped off by the natives of some village you spend a night at. You
look for 'em next mornin' and where are they? Gone! There are their
loads, an' no one to carry 'em! You've got to leave your loads an'
return, an' the police you told so stric'ly to go to hell meet you with
broad grins and lead you to the gov'ment office. There the collector,
or, what's worse, the 'sistant collector, gives you a lecture on infamy
an' the law of doin' as you'd be done by. You ask for your loads back,
an' he laughs at you. An' that's all about it, excep' that next time
you happen to want a favor done you by gov'ment you get a lecture
instead! No, you can't get away, an' it's no use tryin'! If you was
Greeks maybe, or Arabs, yes. Bein' English, the Indian Penal Code,
which is white man's law in these parts, 'll get you sure!"

Brown of Lumbwa sighed at recollection of his wrongs, turned over, and
went to sleep again. The train bowled along over high veld, cutting in
half magnificent distances and stopping now and then at stations whose
excuse for existence was unimaginable. We stopped at a station at last
where the Hindu clerk sold tea and biscuits. The train disgorged its
passengers and there was a scramble in th