158 TAVETA AND MOUNTS KILIMANJAEO AND MERU 



Dr. Gustav Fischer, very well, told us a lot about him, and 

 declared he had been his best friend. Although this medicine- 

 man claimed to be a sultan, and a very great sultan too, we were 

 anything but enamoured of his gallows face, and placed very 

 little confidence in him. An ox he gave us was such a mere 

 skeleton that a leopard, which paid us a visit the next night, 

 despised it as a meal, and only bit off its tail ! 



On the morning of May 7 we left Mount Meru to return to 

 Taveta by way of Little Arusha and Kahe. We had added ten 

 grey asses to our caravan, but we had left behind our Muscat 

 donkey, Msungu, so-called on account of its silver-grey hair. 

 The poor creature had been bitten some twenty hours previously 

 by a kind of fly ; its mouth became swollen, it breathed with 

 great difiiculty, and was evidently in considerable pain. We 

 were very sorry to lose it, and knew we should greatly miss it 

 later. 



We meant to start quite early, to avoid the natives, but we 

 were delayed a little by the unfortunate illness of one of our 

 men, who was struck down by fever. We left him under the 

 care of a native whose appearance insjDired respect and 

 confidence, of course paying in advance for his keep, and 

 arranging for him to follow us later. 



Our course was for a time along the Magsuru river ; then 

 we crossed it, and, passing close to the east of Lake Balbal, 

 pressed on for the Akati river, rising on Mount Meru, which 

 later, in receiving the Magsuru, absorbs all the mountain 

 streams, and flows into the Dariama. The sky was clear, and 

 after being in the cool mountain regions so long we felt the 

 unwonted heat of the sun on the barren treeless steppes 

 terribly. We camped on the Akati, and later in the afternoon 

 we enjoyed a beautiful sight. Close by, on our left, the dark, 

 almost black pyramid of Meru rose up from the golden steppe, 

 whilst beyond, in majestic dignity, towered Kilimanjaro, its 



