Nor have I been pestered by mosquitoes. In all my African experience I have never had as many mosquitoes to contend with as I have had in a single night in my apartment on Central Park West. However, one avoids a single African mosquito as one would avoid the pest, because that is just what he may turn out to be. For six months at a time my mosquito nets have remained in the duffle bags.
In the game country there are millions of ticks, but as a rule their worst offence is simply to crawl over one. The spirillum tick must be avoided. I have never seen one but I have been incapacitated and brought near the door of death as a result of his work. And when the jigger decides to establish a colony under one's toenails he cannot be too quickly nor too carefully dispossessed.
There are other pests besides insects, snakes, and drouth to be guarded against in Africa. One of these is fire. In making a camp, it is always wise to burn off the ground about the tents for the sake of protection. The most strenuous fight I ever had to make against a grass fire took place in Uganda the day that I killed the big bull elephant now in the Milwaukee Public Museum. We had been working hard from eleven o'clock in the morning until early evening. Meanwhile, camp had been made close to our work in a country of bush and high grass. Immediately surrounding our camp the grass was five feet high and very dense and dry. To the east of us was a great jungle of elephant grass, a sort of cane growing to a height of ten or fifteen feet. For two
