XI 



TRAVELS m EASTERN AFRICA 



503 



ample, for caravans which are sent with mission sup- 

 plies to posts in the interior or with Government 

 supplies for Uganda. These men are aware, when 

 they enlist, of the exact duration of their journey. 

 For purposes of exploration, however, a force is not 

 enlisted after that manner. The explorer can never 

 tell how long it will take to accomplish the task which 

 he has set for himself, and in enlisting men he can- 

 not with honesty agree to lead them by fixed roads 

 to certain places; as his purpose is to explore an un- 

 known country, and he is ignorant of the route and 

 the time necessary for its accomplishment. In engag- 

 ing my men, the usual agreement had been drawn up 

 by my agents. Smith, Mackenzie & Co., of Zanzibar. 

 In this agreement there was not one word stipulating 

 the length of time I intended to be gone. It con- 

 tained simply a statement of the wages I intended to 

 pay the different men, and the amount of money I 

 had advanced each of them prior to departure from 

 Zanzibar. 



The deserters, upon being questioned by Mr. Allen, 

 had been unable to mention a single man of the many 

 whom they alleged I had killed by shooting or exces- 

 sive flogging, with the exception of the one porter, 

 who had been accidentally killed early in the journey 

 by the Soudanese, Mahomet el Hussein; but they 

 said, and on this point they all concurred, that all the 

 alleged shooting and beating to death had occurred 

 prior to our first arrival at Daitcho in March, 1893. 

 The fact that this one man was killed, seemed, in the 

 minds of the authorities at Zanzibar, to warrant the 

 desertion of my entire caravan, although it was admit- 



