-* Hostile Forces 



dew and rain ; the cheering sunbeams cannot penetrate 

 the rain-clouds, and it there are many successive clays 

 like this, all necessary articles that the traveller has with 

 him become mouldy, and are ruined by being grown 

 over by fungi. Hence one has the sensation of sinking 

 in an endless sea ot grass, whose dripping spikes swing- 

 together above the heads of the carriers, while every- 

 thing, down to the very smallest article, is dripping 

 with water. 



In such circumstances the traveller, for whole weeks 

 at a time, comes in contact with nothing but wet clothes, 

 wet beds, wet everything ; and now, if fever-germs are 

 brooding in our bodies, is their time for development 

 the inordinate daily and nightly hardships will be sure 

 to prove favourable to them. 



How extraordinarily difficult it is sometimes to obtain 

 trustworthy accounts from the natives of the habits of 

 animals was proved by a small expedition which I under- 

 took in June 1899, from Pangani, in search of buffaloes 

 in Useguha. I had been told so much about them : 

 they ought surely to be easy to find in the hinterland 

 of Useguha. But my undertaking was unpropitious (as 

 indeed were all my journeys that year) by reason of the 

 great famine. 



ramparts were on the alert every night, expecting an attack. Shortly after 

 my departure the outbreak occurred, a number of Europeans losing their 

 lives in it. 



I feel it incumbent upon me to make this acknowledgment of my deep 

 gratitude to my English friends I venture so to style them for their 

 kindness to me. 



6/3 



