DETAINED AT K'lIUTU. 



267 



Salim to mount ass and to bring back the porters by 

 offers which they would have accepted. Some time 

 afterwards, when I fancied that he was probably haran- 

 guing the men, he came to me to say that he had not 

 eaten and the sun was hot. With the view of shaming 

 him I directed Kidogo to do the work, but as he also 

 made excuses, Khamisi and Shehe, two sons of Ramji, 

 were despatched with cloths to buy rations for the 

 Pagazi, and, coute qui coute, to bring them back. They 

 set out on the 2nd January, and returned on the 7th 

 January, never having, according to their own account, 

 seen the fugitives. 



This was a regrettable occurrence : it gave a handle 

 to private malice under the specious semblance of 

 public duty. But such events are common on the 

 slave-path in Eastern Africa; of the seven gangs of 

 porters engaged on this journey only one, an unusually 

 small proportion, left me without being fully satisfied, 

 and that one deserved to be disappointed. 



We were detained at K'hutu till the 20th January. 

 The airiest of schemes were ventilated by Said bin Salim 

 and my companion. Three of the Baloch eye- sores, the 

 " Graybeard Mohammed," the mischief-maker Khuda- 

 bakhsh, and the mulatto Jelai, were sent to the coast 

 with letters, reports, and officials for Zanzibar and 

 home. The projectors then attempted to engage 

 Wak'hutu porters, but after a long palaver, P'hazi 

 Madenge, the principal chief of Uziraha, who at first 

 undertook to transport us in person to Dut'humi, de- 

 clared that he could not assist us. It was then pro- 

 posed to trust for porterage to the Wazaramo ; that 

 project also necessarily fell to the ground. Two feasible 

 plans remained : either to write to the coast for a new 

 gang, or to await the transit of some down-caravan. 



