varicious. They pester travellers, jeering, quizzing, and pointing at
them on the road and in camp intrusively forcing their way into the
tents.

In January, after many very trying experiences, we arrived at
Unyamuezi--the Country of the Moon--with which the Hindus, before the
Christian era, had commercial dealings in ivory and slaves. The natives
are wanting in pluck and gallantry, the whole tribe are desperate
smokers and greatly given to drink. Here some Arabs came to pay their
respects, they told me what I had said about the N'yanza being the
source of the Nile would turn out all right, as all the people in the
north knew that when the N'yanza rose, the stream rushed with such
violence it tore up islands and floated them away. By the end of March
we had crossed the forests, forded the Quande nullah and entered the
rich flat district of Mininga, where the gingerbread palm grows
abundantly.

During my stay with Musa, the king at Kaze, who had shown himself
friendly on a previous expedition, I underwent some trying experiences
in trying to mediate between two rival rulers, Snay and Manua Sera,
between whom there was continual wrangle and conflict. On one occasion
Musa, who was suffering from a sharp illness, to prove to me that he was
bent on leaving Kaze the same time as myself, began eating what he
called his training pills--small dried buds of roses with alternate bits
of sugar candy. Ten of these buds, he said, eaten dry, were sufficient,
especially after having been boiled in rice water or milk.

Struggling on, faced by the thievish sultans and followed by my train of
quarrelling servants, I at last reached Uzinza, which is ruled by a
Wahuma chief of Abyssinian stock, and here I found the petty chiefs
quite as extortionate in extorting hongo (tax) as others. To add to my
troubles a new leader I had previously engaged, called "the Pig," gave
me great annoyance, causing a mutiny amongst my men. Some were saying,
"They were the flesh and I was the knife; I cut and did with them just
what I liked, and they couldn't stand it any longer." However, they had
to stand it, and I brought them to reason.

_II.--Travel Difficulties and a King's Hospitality_

A bad cough began to trouble me so much that whilst mounting a hill I
blew and grunted like a broken-winded horse, and during an enforced halt
at Lumeresi's village I was in constant pain, so much that lying down
became impossible. This chief tried to plunder and de