THE CLIMATE OF UNYANYEMBE. 671 



detain the reader with the proceedings of the council : it is enough 

 that it was determined to march against this impertinent chief 

 and annihilate him at once. And Mr. Stanley, partly because 

 he saw no other way of reaching Ujiji and relieving Dr. Living- 

 stone, and partly because he felt under obligation to assist those 

 who had shown him such attentions, consented to join them in 

 the enterprise. 



In the interval of the preparations for this war, Mr. Stanley 

 was attacked by that subtle enemy of the white man, which 

 must be confronted in every part of Africa. The fever raged, 

 and in the days of delirium he traversed again the varied scenes 

 of the eventful past. He had come to Unyanyembe about the 

 beginning of summer. It is then that the east wind, the only 

 wind so ill that it blows nobody any good in any land, comes 

 sweeping over the country, " refrigerated by the damp alluvial 

 valleys of the first region, and the tree-clad peaks and swampy 

 plains of Usagara, with a freezing cold in an atmosphere properly 

 tepid. These unnatural combinations of extremes, causing sudden 

 chills when the skin perspires, bring on inevitable disease. These 

 gales are most violent in the earlier part of the season, imme- 

 diately after the cessation of the rains, and as the summer ad- 

 vances the transition diseases disappear and the climate becomes 

 more agreeable." Mr. Stanley arrived just in the trying period ; 

 though suffering severely, the torture was of short duration, and 

 he tells us that on the tenth day after his first illness he was in 

 good trim again. Then Shaw was down, next Selim, and it 

 was the 28th of July before they were sufficiently recovered to 

 start on such an enterprise as lay before him. 



Although contemplating an engagement with Mirambo, he 

 was so confident that the allied forces would vanquish that chief 

 easily that he determined to go as far as his border, prepared to 

 continue his journey to Ujiji without returning to Unyanyembe. 

 Accordingly he left Unyanyembe on the 29th with fifty men, 

 loaded with bales, beads and wire. At Mfuto, after a three 

 days' march, he joined the Arab forces, having stored his goods. 

 The army, mustering in all two thousand two hundred and fifty 

 men, advanced upon the stronghold of the enemy. Then fol- 

 lows a story of failure, of retreat, of shameful cowardice on the 

 part of those most deeply interested, and a few days later he was 



