I STAET ON A VISIT TO BUMA AND MARLE 



201 



much attention to us, and liad broken up tlie old market. 

 They were not in danger of actual submersion, as their village 

 lay too high for that, but they would soon be cut off from the 

 grazing grounds for their cattle by the rising floods. 



Qualla came back late in the evening with very bad news. 

 ISTothing could be worse than the condition of the roads, and 

 the river was quite impassable. The supplies of dhurra were 

 also beginning to fail. 



During the next two days we were kept prisoners in camp 

 by a continuous downpour of rain. The plain beneath our 

 sandy hill was ^converted into a lake, and we could see for 

 ourselves that it would be hopeless to attempt the northerly 

 route. We had now, therefore, to make one more efibrt to 

 get what we wanted for retracing our steps, and, if we failed, 

 why then it must be a case of sauve qui pent. 



Count Teleki wished me to go to the Buma and Marie, or 

 wherever I could, to make the necessary purchases ; so, early on 

 the morning of May 10, I started with Qualla and fifty men, 

 the Oromaj having fallen in with our plans so far as to provide 

 me with a guide. 



We tramped for an hour through a sandy district with 

 plenty of fresh green bush and umbrella acacias, beyond which 

 we came to a dreary lowland thickly overgrown with weeds, 

 evidently doomed very soon to be flooded, for it was already 

 intersected in every direction with channels filled with water, 

 and we were in danger at every hundred paces of tumbling 

 unawares into one of them. In another half hour we came 

 to plantations of dhurra, between the stalks of which, most 

 of them taller than a man, were rough scaffoldings from 

 which women and boys were trying to drive away the count- 

 less birds by shouting and throwing stones. Our way led 

 us right through these dhurra fields, past the isolated watch- 

 men's huts, but our appearance excited neither surprise nor 



