-* Hostile Forces 



dew and rain : the cheering sunbeams cannot penetrate 

 the rain-clouds, and if there are many successive days 

 like this, all necessary articles that the traveller has with 

 him become mouldy, and are ruined by being grown 

 over by fungi. I lence one has the sensation ot sinking 

 in an endless sea of 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, lor whole weeks 

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

 wet beds, \vet everything ; and now, it fever-germs are 

 brooding in our bodies, is their time tor development 

 the inordinate daily and nightly hardship:? will lie sure 

 to prove favourable to them. 



How extraordinarily difficult it is sometimes to obtain 

 trustworthy accounts from the natives ot the habits ot 

 animals was proved by a small expedition which I under- 

 took in June 180,0,, Irom 1'angani, in search ot butlaloes 

 in I'seguha. I had been told so much about them : 

 they ought surely to be easy to find in the hinterland 

 of I seguha. But my undertaking was unpropitious ^as 

 indeed were all my lourneys that year) by reason ot the 

 great famine. 



ramparts were on tin. 1 alert every m^ht, expecting .in attack. Shortly alter 

 my departure the outbreak occurred, a number ot Kuropean^ lo-in^ their 

 lives in it. 



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

 gratitude to my Kn^hsh friends I venture M> to >rylc them tor their 

 kindness to me. 



675 



