It must be confessed, however, that if the weather prove unfavourable the discomforts are great, and it requires a resolute effort to look at the bright side of things. To travel for several hours in the rain, with the bearers slipping about in the stiff adhesive clay—now sinking to the knees in a slough in the hollows, and then painfully toiling up the rugged ascents—with a chance of being benighted in the middle of the forest, were not enjoyable incidents in the journey. Added to this, occasionally the bearers of baggage and bedding and food would be far behind, and sometimes would not turn up at all, leaving us to go supperless, not to bed, but to do as well as we could on a dirty mat. But, after all said and done, I can look back on many journeys with great pleasure; and my wife and I have even said to each other at the end, “It has been like a prolonged picnic.” And by travelling at the proper time of the year—for we never used, if possible, to take long journeys in the rainy season—and with ordinary care in arranging the different stages, there was often no more discomfort than that inseparable from the unavoidable fatigue. Soon after breakfast on the morning of the 3rd October the yard of Mr Procter’s house was filled with the bearers waiting to take their packages, and, as more came than were actually required, there was a good deal of noise and confusion until all the loads had been apportioned. Most of my _màromìta_ were strong and active young men, spare and lithe of limb, and proved to possess great powers of endurance. The loads they carried were not very heavy, but it was astonishing to see with what steady patience they bore them hour after hour under a burning sun, and up and down paths in the forest, where their progress was often but a scrambling from one foothold to another. Two men would take a load of between eighty and ninety pounds, slung on a bamboo, between them; and this was the most economical way of taking goods, for, on account of the difficulty of the paths, four men found it more fatiguing to carry in one package a weight which, divided into two, could easily be borne by two sets of bearers. [Sidenote: MY PALANQUIN]