DIFFICULTY IN SENDING LETTERS. 401 



and I have given him beads and cloth sufficient to buy provisions for himself 

 on the way back to Zanzibar. He has done nothing here. He neither went 

 near the goods here, nor tried to prevent them being stolen on the way. I 

 suppose that pay for four months in coming, other four of rest, and four in 

 going back, would be ample, but I leave this to your decision. I could not 

 employ him to carry my mail back, nor can I say anything to him, for he at 

 once goes to the Ujijians, and gives his own version of all he hears. He is 

 untruthful and ill-conditioned, and would hand over the mail to any one who 

 wished to destroy it. The people here are like the Kilwa traders, haters of 

 the English. Those Zanzibar men whom I met between this and Nyassa were 

 gentlemen, and traded with honour. Here, as in the haunts of the Kilwa 

 hordes, slavery is a source of forays, and they dread exposure by my letters. 

 No one will take charge of them. I have got Thani bin Suelini to take a mail 

 privately for transmission to Unyanyembe. It contains a cheque on Kitchio, 

 Stewart & Co., of Bombay, for 2,000 rupees, and some forty letters written 

 during my slow recovery. I fear it may never reach you. A party was sent 

 to the coast two months ago. One man volunteered to take a letter secretly, 

 but his master warned them all not to do so, because I might write something 

 he did not like. He went out with the party, and gave orders to the headman 

 to destroy any letters he might detect on the way. Thus, though I am good 

 friends outwardly with them all, I can get no assistance in procuring carriers ; 

 and, as you will see, if the mail comes to hand, I sent to Zanzibar for fifteen 

 good boatmen to act as carriers if required, eighty pieces of meritano, forty 

 ditto of kinitra^ twelve farasales of the beads called jasain, shoes, etc., etc. I 

 have written to Seyd Majid begging two of his guards to see to the safety of 

 the goods here into Thani bin Suelim's hands, or into those of Mohammed bin 

 Sahib. 



"As to the work done by me, it is only to connect the sources which I 

 have discovered, from 500 to 700 miles south of Speke and Baker, with their 

 Nile. The volume of water which flows from latitude 120° south is so 

 large, I suspect I have been working at the sources of the Congo as well as 

 those of the Nile. I have to go down the eastern line of drainage to Baker's 

 turning point. Tanganyika, Ujiji, Chowambe (Baker's) are one water, and 

 the head of it is 300 miles south of this. The western and central lines of 

 drainage converge into an unvisited lake west or south-west of this. The out- 

 flow of this, whether to Congo or Nile, I have to ascertain. The people of 

 this district, called Manyema, are cannibals, if Arabs speak truly. I may have 

 to go there first, and down Tanganyika, if I come out uneaten, and find my 

 new squad from Zanzibar ; I earnestly hope that you will do what you can to 

 help me with the goods and men. £400 to be sent by Mr. Young must surely 

 have come to you through Fleming Brothers. A long box paid for to Ujiji wa3 

 left at Unyanyembe, and so with other boxes." 

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