Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

124 THINKING BLACK
souls. Very weary and very dreary that great crowd is
witness this worn-out mother whose baby was born to-day
on the long march. Born in the woods, this biped baby
is treated like a little antelope and must travel two hours
after he has seen daylight. Christened after the forest
that cradled him, this title clings to him all his life;
imagine an English baby with no cradle but a travelling-
trunk, and travelling with the trunk as soon as it is born.
We are pushing on for a river camp before nightfall
some have snatched at a dry faggot, remembering the
needed fire ahead ; here and there mushrooms put in an
appearance for the prospective supper, but we are all
weary and pinched. Duck, a welcome sight in the
morning, is the last thing we want to see now, for a duck
means marsh, and marsh means weary wading, wet socks,
and a shiver-and-sweat fever. Afar—oh the music !—the
voice of our terminal river begins at last to call, beckoning
us on, and at last we come out of the forest with a shout of
relief, for there ahead is our river— green Jordan, call it
beyond which is the negroes' promised land of—of camp.
And soon we have negotiated the deep dark thing over
an acrobatic bridge, and soon the axes are out felling a
spacious bivouac. An odd enough company, to be sure,
for ten tribes are represented, which augurs not discord
but the contrary. In the old Mushidi capital stranger
met and mated with stranger, the man from the North
with the woman from the South ; and the family tie was
often shown to be the merest calico concern, wearing out
with the calico that bound it. Our camp every day is