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I now had a sharp attack of fever, but thanks to the excellent care of the doctor, was over it in about forty-eight hours; but Kermit's fever grew worse and he too was unable to work for a day or two. We could walk over the portages, however.
I tried it because I had found cougars such good eating; I have always regretted that in Africa I did not try lion's flesh, which I am sure must be excellent. Next day came Kermit's turn.
A bullet behind the shoulder, from Kermit's 405 Winchester, brought him dead to the ground.
The burden of Kermit's message was "salt, salt, salt!" and porters and second gunbearers to help with the skinning. So James L. Clark, who has been connected with the American Museum of History for some time and who was with us on the Mount Elgon trip to help Mr. Akeley with the preparation of the group, started off with a lot of porters laden with salt for preserving the skins.
The things that we carried were necessities food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining the altitude and longitude and latitude except a few books, each in small compass: Lyra's were in German, consisting of two tiny volumes of Goethe and Schiller; Kermit's were in Portuguese; mine, all in English, included the last two volumes of Gibbon, the plays of Sophocles, More's "Utopia," Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, the two latter lent me by a friend, Major Shipton of the regulars, our military attaché at Buenos Aires.
Kermit's shoes had gone, thanks to the amount of work in the water which he had been doing; and he took the pair I had been wearing, while I put on my spare pair.
In the last report he was quoted as having killed seven lions, while Kermit had killed ten. This seemed to amuse him very much, although the figures were not strictly accurate. His score was nine and Kermit's eight up to date.
Akeley washed up in the colonel's tent, while Stephenson and I used Kermit's tent, and as we washed and scrubbed away the memories of the elephant carcasses the colonel stood in the door and talked to us. We told him that each of us had taken a drink of Scotch whisky the evening before in honor of the elephants the first drinks we had taken for weeks.
After luncheon the colonel said, "Now, I want to inflict my pigskin library on you," and together we went into his tent and he opened an oilcloth-covered, aluminum-lined case that was closely packed with books, nearly all of which were bound in pigskin. It was a present from his sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson. The tent was lined with red, evidently Kermit's darkroom when he was developing pictures.
One canoe was lost, so that of the seven with which we had started only two were left. Cherrie labored with the other men at times, and also stood as guard over them, for, while actually working, of course no one could carry a rifle. Kermit's experience in bridge building was invaluable in enabling him to do the rope work by which alone it was possible to get the canoes down the canyon.
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