DESERTIOX. 



295 



Persian Joe Miller, he will do so at the most 

 awkward of times. The impulsive, irritable, and 

 violent Murungwanah (libertus) is equally apt 

 to abscond, especially after disputes with his 

 fellows, and he generally adds injury to injury by 

 carrying away liis pack. The undisciplinable 

 free porters disappear en masse if commons wax 

 short, if loads be too heavy, if a fight be 

 threatened, or if wasting of ammunition be for- 

 bidden. Under similar circumstances the turbul- 

 ent Baloch mutiny and march off. During our 

 18 months' march there was not, in the party of 

 80, an individual who did not at some time or 

 other desert or attempt to desert us. The Second 

 Expedition, despite all its advantages of more 

 abundant supplies and of ample support from 

 Zanzibar, fared not a whit better : we find in it 

 123 desertions duly chronicled. 



Eor three months and a half our heart-wear- 

 ing work was cheered only by two stimulants, 

 the traveller's delight in seeing new scenes unfold 

 themselves before his eyes and the sense of doing 

 a something lastingly useful to geographers. We 

 were also opening for Europeans a new road into 

 the heart of Africa, a region boundless in com- 

 mercial resources, and bounded in commercial 

 development only by the stereotyped barbarism 



