A SUAHILI GUIDE 33 



From their accounts the whole expedition seemed to have 

 drifted into confusion and disorder. The next morning news 

 came up from Lamu that a dhow, which was bringing forty-six 

 of our camels from the Somali coast, had been wrecked on a 

 coral reef ; this seemed for a moment the deathblow to the 

 expedition. On thinking the matter over, however, it was 

 quite clear that the story was untrue, for no dhow on the coast 

 could carry so many camels. A general consultation was held, 

 and it was decided that a determined effort should be made to 

 get all the stores and men to Ngatana as quickly as possible. 



I accordingly started back to Borabini to hurry the porters 

 up to Witu, and to arrange for the flotilla of maus to continue 

 carrying the goods to Ngatana. A native guide was engaged 

 at the preposterously high price of eight rupees, from whom I 

 learnt that among the Suahili the only essential in a guide is 

 ability to ask the way. As we met no one, this power was not 

 very useful, and we lost our way. We spent from eleven till 

 half-past three wading through a dismal swamp with the water 

 always up to our waists, and frequently to our shoulders. We 

 left the swamp less than three hundred yards from where we 

 had entered it, and then plunged into a jungle of grass and 

 rushes, i 2 feet in height, in which the guide again lost himself, 

 and I took the lead. We found the Galla village of Dibbe at 

 sunset, but the natives would not enter the Pokomo district in 

 the dark, so we tried to find our way by ourselves. We lost 

 the path, found an unrecorded lake known as Somite, and 

 finally, by accident, stumbled on another Galla village. 



I was now dead tired, and, though the guide begged 

 me not to stop the night in this village, declined to go any 

 farther. A Galla lent me some skins in which I wrapped 

 myself. The Galla, however, have rather a bad character, 

 so I slept with one eye watching my sullen host. He could 

 not give me anything to eat, so I started off at dawn and soon 

 reached the river. Some Pokomo fishermen ferried me across, 

 and pointed out the smoke of the fires of Ngao. I arrived 

 there just in time for breakfast, and was very glad to get it, as 

 my one frugal meal of the day before had been my only food 

 for thirty-six hours. 



I had intended to go on to Borabini at once, but Herr 

 Wurtz, a colleague of Herr Beking's, who had just returned 



D 



