flea, that dying still has power to hurt. Dirt and the death of this
tiny visitor result in painful feet that make of marching a very
torture. So great a pest is this that at least five per cent. of our
army, both white and native, are constantly incapacitated. Hundreds of
toenails have I removed for this cause alone. Nor do the jiggers come
singly, but in battalions, and often as many as fifty have to be removed
from one wretched soldier's feet and legs. So we hang our socks upon our
mosquito nets and take our boots to bed with us, nor do we venture to
put bare feet upon the ground.

A yell in the sleeping camp at night, "Some damn thing's bit me;" and
matches are struck, while a sleepy warrior hunts through his blankets
for the soldier ant whose great pincers draw blood, or lurking centipede
or scorpion. For in these dry, hot, dusty countries these nightly
visitors come to share the warm softness of the army blanket. Next
morning, sick and shivering, they come to show to me the hot red flesh
or swollen limb with which the night wanderer has rewarded his
involuntary host.




NIGHT IN MOROGORO


There's nothing quite so wideawake as a tropical night in Africa. At
dawn the African dove commences with his long-drawn note like a boy
blowing over the top of a bottle, one bird calling to another from the
palms and mango trees. Then the early morning songsters wake.