194 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



strangers should be spared. But Ambari, a slave be- 

 longing to Said bin Salim, presently tattled the true tale. 

 The gallant foragers had not dared to enter the village ; 

 when the war-cry flew from hamlet to hamlet, and all 

 the Wasagara, even the women and children, seized their 

 spears and stood to arms, they at once threw themselves 

 into the jungle and descended the hill with such un- 

 seemly haste that most of them bore the wounds of 

 thorns and stones. Two of Baloch, Eiza and Belok, 

 lit their matches and set out proudly to provide them- 

 selves by their prowess ; they were derided by Kidogo : 

 " Verily, 0 my brethren ! ye go forth to meet men and 

 not women ! " and after a hundred yards' walk they 

 took second thoughts and returned. The Mukondokwa 

 Mountains, once a garden, have become a field for fray 

 and foray ; cruelty and violence have brutalised the 

 souls of the inhabitants, and they have learned, as 

 several atrocities committed since our passage through 

 the country prove, to wreak their vengeance upon all 

 weaker than themselves. 



On the 27th August we resumed our way under fresh 

 difficulties. The last march had cost us another ass. 

 Muhinna, a donkey-driver, complaining of fever, had 

 been mounted by Kidogo without my permission, and 

 had summarily departed, thus depriving us of the ser- 

 vices of a second, whilst all were in a state of weakness 

 which compelled them to walk at their slowest pace. On 

 the other hand, the men of the caravan, hungry and 

 suffering from raw south-east wind and the chilly cold, 

 the result not of low temperature but of humidity and 

 extensive evaporation, were for pushing forward as fast 

 as possible. The path was painful, winding along the 

 shoulders of stony and bushy hills, with rough re-entering 

 angles, and sometimes dipping down into the valley of 



