After a march lasting from sunrise till ten o’clock in the forenoon we halted for breakfast, or lunch, as we variously called our first meal, according to the time of day at which we made our halt. The continuous meat diet was getting very monotonous and unpalatable, chiefly owing to the absence of sufficient fat for cooking purposes. Our tobacco, of which, owing to some inadvertence on our departure from the Rendili camp, we had brought only a very small supply, gave out on this day, and we were thus deprived of another solace in the midst of the trials and difficulties of the journey. After we had breakfasted we made our simple preparations for resuming the march, but to our dismay we found that the mules had disappeared. The man in charge of them while they were grazing had carelessly let them wander, and they were not to be found. We eventually discovered their tracks leading back over the path we had traversed in the morning, and we immediately sent some of the men in chase. They returned in an hour with the refractory animals, and we set off once more on our journey down the river. We saw immense herds of game on the road, including giraffe, buffalo, rhinoceros, grantei, and water-buck, and now and again we passed old elephant and lion tracks. To the south and east the shining desert extended away to the horizon, with only a few thorny acacias to relieve the general appearance of sameness. Troops of baboons squatted on the sand or skipped about like children at play, their hoarse barks being interpreted by our little puppy as a challenge, which, however, he wisely declined to accept. At sundown we camped under a clump of palms, and turned in early, thoroughly tired out. For myself, during the whole of our journey to Lorian and back, I slept in paragraphs, so to speak, waking at intervals all through the night, a result contributed to in no small degree by the up-and-down-the-scale-two-octaves bird I have already mentioned.