334 ACROSS 4FKICA. [Chap. 



May, In the beginning of May, I sent another search party two or 



1875. three days' march along the Kauyoka road, to seek some intel- 

 ligence of the people for whom we were waiting ; but they 

 returned unsuccessful, and reported that all the country they 

 passed through had been desolated by Kasongo, Coimbra, and 

 those with them. 



Xo village is secure against destruction under Kasongo's rule, 

 as the following instance will j^rove : A chief having presented 

 himself and paid the customary tribute, Kasongo professed to 

 be perfectly satisfied, and told him that he would return with 

 him and visit his village ; but scarcely had they approached the 

 place when it was surrounded by a cordon. The chief was 

 seized, and compelled by a party of armed men to set lire to 

 the village with his own hands when darkness closed in, after 

 which he was cruelly put to death. 



The wretched fugitives, rushing from the flames into the 

 jungle in the hope of finding safety, were captured by people 

 lying in ambush. The men were slaughtered, and the women 

 sent to recruit the ranks of Kasongo's harem. 



Under the combined infiuence of immoderate drinking and 

 smoking bhang, Kasongo acts like a demon, ordering death and 

 mutilation indiscriminately, and behaving in the most barba- 

 rous manner to any who may be near him. 



Soon after my search party returned, some people of Lovale, 

 who had been engaged in robbing provision-grounds on the 

 road to Kanyoka, arrived in camp with the information that 

 those men I first sent to that place had reached it, and were 

 staying there instead of setting out on the homeward journey. 

 This first party had already been absent more than two months, 

 and the second over a month, and I was daily becoming more 

 impatient to be moving. 



I dared not make any excursions from the camp into the sur- 

 rounding country, for had I left my stores for one moment I 

 should have been robbed ; and even now there was barely 

 enough for the journey to Bih^, and Alvez, I knew, trusted al- 

 most entirely to theft and selling slaves as a means of provision- 

 ing his men on the road. 



At last I persuaded him to send Moenooti, tlio principal of 

 his own immediate followers, to bring in the fellows who were 



