5(5 
THE KILIMA-NJAR 0 EXPEDITION. 
prevision, and so long as they can satisfy the desire of 
the moment care little to provide for future wants as 
yet unfelt. On long journeys, where there is no water 
on the road, you will experience the greater difficulty 
in preventing your men dropping and dying of thirst, 
because, although they may have started, with an ample 
supply of drinking-water in their gourds—quite suf¬ 
ficient for the time required if carefully measured out 
—yet, in spite of warning and prohibition, they will 
squander the precious fluid, quench every slight attack 
of thirst, and consume it all in a few hours; then, 
during the long waterless tramp which ensues, they will 
wring your heart with the sight of their sufferings, and 
stagger along the dusty path with dry, swollen tongues, 
parched lips, and blood-shot eyes. 
So it was on this terrible journey to Maungu. 
Towards midday, when the noon blazed in fierce 
white heat, when the sky was so hot and scintillating 
that it was devoid of all colour and shone like a 
silver shield, when the short, scrubby mimosas gave 
no sheltering shade under their thorny boughs, when 
escape from the overpowering dazzling sunshine was 
impossible, and the baked and heated soil seemed to 
burn the soles of my boots, and made the men who 
were still plodding on pick up their feet like the pro¬ 
verbial dancing bear—then I began to doubt whether 
my party would reach Maungu intact, for now it 
was useless to battle with the sullen sluggishness of 
many of the porters, who preferred lying in the road 
exposed to hard words and blows rather than toiling 
patiently and uninterruptedly on in the direction of 
water and permissible repose. So in sheer despair I 
left them to lie wherever they threw themselves, ac¬ 
cepting in lieu of any other consolation their assurance 
