He has read of the amount of game that the authors have killed and of the narrow escapes that they have had.
He also has read about expeditions into districts with strange names, but naturally these names have meant nothing to him.

I know that I read reams of African stuff about big game shooting and about _safari_, yet in spite of all that, I remained in the dark as to many details of such a life.

I wanted to know what kind of money or trade stuff the hunter carried; what sort of things he had to eat each day; what he wore, and how he got from place to place.

Most writers have a way of saying: "We equipped our _safari_ in Nairobi and made seven marches to such and such a place, where we ran into some excellent eland." All the important small details are thus left out, and the reader remains in ignorance of what the tent boy does, who skins the game that is killed, and what sort of a cook stove they use.
The purpose of this chapter is to tell something about the little things that happen on _safari_.

First of all, at the risk of repeating what has been written so often before, I will say a few words about the personnel of a _safari_, such as the one I was with.
There were four white people in our expedition--Mr.and Mrs.Akeley, Mr.
Stephenson, and myself.