B38 
AT THE MERCY OF HIS MEN. 
rest, shelter, boiling all the water I used, and a new potatoe 
found among the natives, as restoratives, soon put me all 
right. 
The rains continued into July, and fifty-eight inches fell. 
The mud from the clayey soil was awful, and it laid up 
some of the strongest men, in spite of their intense eager- 
ness for ivory. 
I lost no time after it was feasible to travel in preparing 
to follow the river, but my attendants were fed and lodged 
by the slave women, whose husbands were away from camp 
on trade, and pretended to fear going into a canoe. I con- 
sented to refrain from buying one. They then pretended to 
fear the people, though the inhabitants all along the Lua- 
laba were reported by the slaves to be remarkably friendly. 
1 have heard both slaves and freemen say, “ No one will 
ever attack people so good,” as they found them. Else- 
where I could employ the country people as carriers, and 
was comparatively independent, though deserted by some 
four times over. But in Manyema no one can be induced 
to go into the next district, for fear, they say, of being 
killed and eaten. 
I was at the mercy of those who had been Moslem slaves, 
and knew that in thwarting me they had the sympathy of 
all that class in the country ; and as many others would 
have done, took advantage of the situation. 
I went on with only three attendants, and this time 
northwest, in ignorance that the great, river flows west and 
by south; but no one could tell me anything about it. 
A broad belt of buga, or prairie, lies along the right bank- 
inland from this it is all primeval forest, with villages from 
eight to ten miles apart. One sees the sun only in the 
cleared spaces around human dwellings. From the facili- 
ties of escaping, the forest people are wilder and more dan- 
gerous than those on the buga lands. 
Muhamed's people went further on in the forest than I 
could, and came to the mountainous country of the F ,a " 
legga, who collected in large numbers and demanded of tho 
