howled through Ugogo and Unyamwezi with the force of a storm. It was also the home of the dews, where sprang the clear springs which cheered by their music the bosky dells below, and enriched the populous district of Mpwapwa. One felt better, stronger, on this breezy height, drinking in the pure air and feasting the eyes on such a varied landscape as it presented, on spreading plateaus green as lawns, on smooth rounded tops, on mountain vales containing recesses. which might charm a hermit's soul, on deep and awful ravines where reigned a twilight gloom, on fractured and riven precipices, on huge fantastically-worn boulders which overtopped them, on picturesque tracts which embraced all that was wild, and all that was poetical in Nature.

Mpwapwa, though the traveller from the coast will feel grateful for the milk it furnished after being so long deprived of it, will be kept in mind as a most remarkable place for earwigs. In my tent they might be counted by thousands; in my slung cot they were by hundreds; on my clothes they were by fifties; on my neck and head they were by scores. The several plagues of locusts, fleas, and lice sink into utter insignificance compared with this damnable one of earwigs. It is true they did not bite, and they did not irritate the cuticle, but what their presence and numbers suggested was something so horrible that it drove one nearly insane to think of it. Who will come to East Africa without reading the experiences of Burton and Speke? Who is he that having read them will not remember with horror the dreadful account given by Speke of his encounters with these pests? My intense nervous watchfulness alone, I believe, saved me from a like calamity.

Second to the earwigs in importance and in numbers were the white ants, whose powers of destructiveness were simply awful. Mats, cloth, portmanteaus, clothes, in short, every article I possessed, seemed on the verge of destruction, and, as I witnessed their voracity, I felt anxious lest my tent should be devoured while I slept. This was the first khambi since leaving the coast where their presence became a matter of anxiety; at all other camping places hitherto the red and black ants had usurped our attention, but at Mpwapwa the red species were not seen, while the black were also very scarce.

After a three days' halt at Mpwapwa I decided on a march to Marenga Mkali which should be uninterrupted until we reached Mvumi in Ugogo, where I should be inducted into the art of paying tribute to the Wagogo chiefs. The first march to Kisokweh was purposely made short, being barely four miles, in order to enable Sheikh Thani, Sheikh Hamed, and five or six Wasawahili caravans to come up with me at Chunyo on the confines of Marenga Mkali.

THROUGH MARENGA MKALI, UGOGO, AND UYANZI, TO

THE 22nd of May saw Thani and Hamed's caravans united with my own at Chunyo, three and a half

hours' march from Mpwapwa. The road from the latter place ran along the skirts of the Mpwapwa range; at three or four places it crossed outlying spurs that stood isolated from the main body of the range. The last of these hill spurs, joined by an elevated cross ridge to the Mpwapwa, shelters the tembe of Chunyo, situated on the western face, from the stormy gusts that come roaring down the steep slopes. The water of Chunyo is eminently bad, in fact it is its salinenitrous nature which has given the name Marenga Mkali-bitter water-to the wilderness which separates Usagara from Ugogo. Though extremely offensive to the palate, Arabs and the natives drink it without fear, and without any bad results; but they are careful to withhold their baggage animals from the pits. Being ignorant of its nature, and not exactly understanding what precise location was meant by Marenga Mkali, I permitted the donkeys to be taken to water, as usual after a march; and the consequence was calamitous in the extreme. What the fearful swamp of Makata had spared, the waters of Marenga Mkali destroyed. In less than five days after our departure from Chunyo or Marenga Mkali, five out of the nine donkeys left to me at the time-the five healthiest animals-fell victims. The water appeared to cause retention of urine, for three of the animals died from this cause.

We formed quite an imposing caravan as we emerged from inhospitable Chunyo, in number amounting to about four hundred souls. We were strong in guns, flags, horns, sounding drums and noise. To Sheikh Hamed, by permission of Sheikh Thani, and myself was allotted the task of guiding and leading this great caravan through dreaded Ugogo; which was a most unhappy selection, as will be seen hereafter.

From

Marenga Mkali, over thirty miles across, was at last before us. This distance had to be traversed within thirty-six hours, so that the fatigue of the ordinary march would be more than doubled by this. Chunyo to Ugogo not one drop of water was to be found. As a large caravan, say over two hundred souls, seldom travels over one and three-quarter miles per hour, a march of thirty miles would require seventeen hours of endurance without water and but little rest. East Africa generally possessing unlimited quantities of water, caravans have not been compelled for lack of the element to have recourse to the mushok of India and the khirbeh of Egypt. Being able to cross the waterless districts by a couple of long marches, they content themselves for the time with a small gourdful, and with keeping their imaginations dwelling upon the copious quantities they will drink upon arrival at the watering-place.

The march through this waterless district was most monotonous, and a dangerous fever attacked me, which seemed to eat into my very vitals. The wonders of Africa that bodied themselves forth in the shape of flocks of zebras, giraffes, elands, or antelopes, galloping over the jungleless plain, had no charm for me; nor could they serve to draw my attention from the severe fit of sickness which possessed me. Towards the end of the first march I was not able to sit upon the donkey's back; nor would it do, when but a third of the way across the wilderness, to halt until the next day; soldiers were therefore detailed to carry me in a hammock, and, when the terekeza was performed in the afternoon, I lay in a lethargic state, unconscious of all things. With the night passed the fever, and, at 3 o'clock in the morning, when the march was