MOUNTAINS AND HOT SPRINGS. 
539 
strangers why they came. “We came to buy ivory,” was 
the reply, 11 and if you have none, no harm is done ; wo 
shall return.” "Nay! ’’they shouted, "you came to die, 
and this day is your last; you came to die — you came to 
die!” When forced to lire on the Balegga, the terror was 
like their insolence — extreme. And next day, when sent 
for to take away the women and children who were cap- 
tured, no one appeared. 
Having travelled with my informants, 1 knew their ac- 
counts to be trustworthy. The rivers crossed by them are 
numerous and large. One was so tortuous, they were five 
hours in water waist and often neck deep, with a man in a 
small canoe, sounding for places which they could pass. 
In another case they were two hours in the water, and they 
could see nothing in the forest, and nothing in the Balegga 
country, but one mountain packed closely on the back of 
another, without end, and a very hot fountain in one of tha 
valley’s. 
I found continual wading in mud grievous; for the first 
time in my life my feet failed. When torn by hard travel, 
instead of healing kindly, as heretofore, irritable ulcers 
fastened on each foot. The people were invariably civil, 
and even kind ; for, curiously enough, the Zanzibar slaves 
propagated everywhere glowing accounts of my goodness, 
and of the English generally, because they never mads 
slaves. 
A trading party passed us, and one of their number was 
pinned to the ground by a spear at dead of night, while I 
was sleeping, with my three attendants, at a village closs 
by. Nine villages had been burned, and, as the author of 
the outrage told me, at least forty men killed, because a 
Manyema man tried to steal a string of beads. The mid- 
night assassination was revenge for the loss of friends 
there. It was evident that reaction against the bloody 
slaving had set in. 
The accounts, evidently truthful, given by Muhamed’s 
people showed that nothing would be gained by going fur- 
