independent who had nothing to do with the serious business of
marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating of
loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from
the ranks and died down again as one or another individual or
group felt moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response.
Their leader, in a high falsetto, said something like

"Kuna koma kuno,"

and all his tribesmen would follow with a single word in a deep
gruff tone

"Za-la-nee!"

All of which undoubtedly helped immensely.

The country was a bully country, but somehow it did not look like
Africa. That is to say, it looked altogether too much like any
amount of country at home. There was nothing strange and exotic
about it. We crossed a little plain, and up over a small hill,
down into a shallow canyon that seemed to be wooded with live
oaks, across a grass valley or so, and around a grass hill. Then
we went into camp at the edge of another grass valley, by a
stream across which rose some ordinary low cliffs.

That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this
country-it is so much like home. Of course, there are many wide
districts exotic enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the
rivers, the bamboo forests, the great tangled forests themselves,
the banana groves down the aisles of which dance savages with