STANLEY'S SEARCH FOR LIVINGSTONE 339 



Day by day the caravans proceeded, marching a few hours at a 

 time, and covering but a few miles in a day. Although the outbreak 

 of the rainy season or Masika, as it is called, was expected, the weather 

 continued fine. Through a rich and rolling country, extremely fertile, 

 producing numberless varieties of grain and fruit; across open plains 

 and shallow valleys which were covered' with an exuberant wilderness 

 of growth, save in the cultivated neighborhood of villages; through 

 glades of mighty trees — the ebony, the calabash, and the mango ; over 

 seas of grasses of many kinds, and amid islands of tree-clumps or 

 tangled thickets, Stanley's caravans proceeded on their course two or 

 three days' march behind' each other. All went well until they came 

 in for the first taste of the Masika when encamped at Kingaru. The 

 place itself was unhealthy, and when Stanley renewed his march, most 

 of his men were enfeebled by ague, fever, or dysentery, and the two 

 valuable horses he had were dead. 



On the 8th of April, 1870, between Imbiki and Msuwa, the expe- 

 dition had their first experience of jungle. Added to the obstacles 

 which "a wall of thorny plants and creepers" bristling on each side 

 of a narrow path — but a foot in width — across which projecting 

 branches stretched with "knots of spiky twigs stiff as spike-nails, 

 ready to catch and hold anything," would naturally present to a train 

 of donkeys laden with large bales, there arose from the decayed vege- 

 tation around such a breath of miasma, mingled with the poisonous 

 stench of the rank undergrowth, that Stanley momentarily expected 

 to find himself and his men succumb to an attack of jungle fever. This 

 jungle was happily soon left behind', and on the succeeding days the 

 road proved excellent. They had now reached an elevated and fertile 

 country, where sugar corn, Indian corn and other plants grew luxuri- 

 antly and the banana flourished in abundance. 



The expedition reached the country of Useguhha on April i6th, 

 and at Muhalleh, the first 'settlement in this country, Stanley met a 

 huge Arab caravan on the downward journey to Bagamoyo, from 

 Tanganyika, and for the first time had tidings of Livingstone. The 

 Arab Sheikh, Salim Bin Rashid, told him that he had actually lived 

 for two weeks in a hut next to that in which Livingstone dwelt at 

 Ujiji; that the great traveler looked aged and ill, and that his hair 



