WAGGOGO CURIOSITY. 959 



parched ground is as trying as the blazing sun overhead. The doctor and 

 I have, by God's blessing, enjoyed the best health. After Ugogo it will 

 be a treat to enjoy solitude. Waggogo curiosity is well described by Stanley, 

 as indeed is the whole country. Here it is excessive. We have to place 

 guards at the tent door to keep them from drawing the canvas aside and 

 peeping in. They have brought the art of robbery to perfection. Yet 

 they are a fine, bold race, and some day I hope will be brought to look on 

 honesty as more commendable than robbery. Our route diverges from 

 Stanley's at Mukondoku, and making to the northward passes Simbo. It is 

 more direct, and, allowing for African roads, we are, I think about three hun- 

 dred and fifty miles from the lake." 



The following journal, kept by the Rev. C. T. Wilson, gives the fullest 

 account that has yet been received of the first half of the route to the lake, 

 viz., from the coast to Mpwapwa. The account of the route forward from 

 Mpwapwa to Nguru is comparatively meagre, having no doubt been sent off 

 in haste. 



" July 28th, 1876. — We were employed all the morning in getting the 

 pagaazi together, and getting their loads out. Some of them had been work- 

 ing at the French Mission on previous days, and had not got their cloth 

 packed, and we had a good deal of trouble with them about it ; but by three 

 o'clock we had got most of them off for Gunira, the first halt, distant, according 

 to my pedometer, two miles and three-quarters. About three o'clock Lieut. 

 Smith and I started for Gunira with three pack-donkeys carrying loads; and 

 my servant Baraka, and Mabruki, the tall cooper and guide, who is the finest 

 specimen of a negro I have seen — tall, well made, about twenty -three years 

 of age, possessing all the good temper of his race, and as strong as a horse. 

 The donkeys were tied one behind the other, and gave us a great deal of 

 trouble at first, constantly flying off at a tangent and breaking their ropes ; 

 and on coming to the only tree on the whole way, which grew in the middle 

 of the path, two of them at once made up their minds to go on opposite sides 

 of it, and one was nearly strangled in the attempt. We got on with them 

 better for a time, till we came to the swamp just before Gunira, when the 

 donkey which was carrying the ammunition-cases wanted to lie down in the 

 water, but Mabruki had him up, and made him keep his feet. This swamp 

 was beautiful, being full of splendid ferns, and a very pretty pink convol- 

 vulus, and at night was perfectly alive with fire-flies — a sight worth coming 

 hundreds of miles to see. Arrived at Gunira, we unloaded the donkeys, 

 pitched the tent, and got things straight. Then we drew up our men in a 

 circle, and the kilangozi, or guide and head-man, went round with us while 

 we paid each man two days' postho or money allowance for food, and gave 

 each man a zinc tally, with a number on it, to distinguish them. These 

 tallies delighted them, and many of them went off with them, skipping and 



