uffalo
is in convulsions this morning. The cruelty of these sepoys vitiates
my experiment, and I quite expect many camels, one buffalo, and one
mule to die yet; they sit down and smoke and eat, leaving the animals
loaded in the sun. If I am not with them, it is a constant dawdling;
they are evidently unwilling to exert themselves, they cannot carry
their belts and bags, and their powers of eating and vomiting are
astounding. The Makonde villages are remarkably clean, but no sooner
do we pass a night in one than the fellows make it filthy. The climate
does give a sharp appetite, but these sepoys indulge it till relieved
by vomiting and purging. First of all they breakfast, then an hour
afterwards they are sitting eating the pocketfuls of corn maize they
have stolen and brought for the purpose, whilst I have to go ahead,
otherwise we may be misled into a zigzag course to see Ali's friends;
and if I remain behind to keep the sepoys on the move, it deprives me
of all the pleasure of travelling. We have not averaged four miles a
day in a straight line, yet the animals have often been kept in the
sun for eight hours at a stretch. When we get up at 4 A.M. we cannot
get under weigh before 8 o'clock. Sepoys are a mistake.

_7th May, 1866._--We are now opposite a mountain called Nabungala,
which resembles from the north-east an elephant lying down. Another
camel, a very good one, died on the way: its shiverings and
convulsions are not at all like what we observed in horses and oxen
killed by tsetse, but such may lie the cause, however. The only
symptom pointing to the tsetse is the arterial-looking blood, but we
never saw it ooze from the skin after the bite of the gad-fly as we do
now.

_8th May, 1866._--We arrived at a village called Jponde, or Liponde,
which lies opposite a granitic hill on the other-side of the river
(where we spent a night on our boat trip), called Nakapuri; this is
rather odd, for the words are not Makonde but Sichuana, and signify
goat's horn, from the projections jutting out from the rest of the
mass. I left the havildar, sepoys, and Nassick boys here in order to
make a forced march forward, where no food is to be had, and send
either to the south or westwards for supplies, so that after they have
rested the animals and themselves five days they may come. One mule is
very ill; one buffalo drowsy and exhausted; one camel a mere skeleton
from bad sores; and another has an enormous hole at the point of the