All trade goods for barter with the natives can be bought at Mombasa, the starting-point. It is now of little use to go down to Zanzibar, since porters (for transport) are not allowed to engage themselves for up-country work. Everything can be done at and from Mombasa, where not only can all trade goods be purchased, packed into the regulation 65 lb. loads, each load numbered, and an invoice taken of it, but all the latest information about the most suitable quality and quantity of goods required for the countries about to be visited can be better obtained at Mombasa than elsewhere. To obtain the latest information with regard to the different kinds and qualities of cloth and beads is most important. Fashions change even in East Central Africa, and beads of a certain colour or cloth of a certain quality, which were perhaps in great demand one year, will not even be looked at the following year. Should the wrong kind of goods be taken up by mistake, the natives, although they might be willing to exchange their products for them, would only do so at such exorbitant prices that a trip would have to be curtailed, and all sorts of annoyances and disappointments incurred on account of the unlooked-for and ruinous expenditure of goods, unless others of the right kind were sent for from the coast, or could be procured from one of the stations near at hand. CHAPTER VII GAME DISTRICTS AND ROUTES BY F. J. JACKSON At particular seasons of the year there is a considerable migration of game beasts, and though all the lines of their migration are not ascertained, it is quite certain that great numbers work their way towards the coast between April and July; instinct in all probability impelling them in that direction, where the grass and all other vegetation are abundant. It would consequently be advisable for the sportsman to choose the time for his contemplated trip to a certain district when game is most likely to be plentiful there. Regard should also be had to a place suitable and convenient for headquarters, where surplus baggage, trophies, &c., can be stored, and where food for the caravan is procurable. The Kilimanjaro district, with Taveta as a depôt, was at one time, and perhaps is still, one of the best game districts in East Africa. Here game of nearly every variety is to be found, with the exception of _Kobus defassus_, _Kobus Kob_, Jackson’s hartebeest, sable antelope, _Damalis Senegalensis_, and the oribi. Elephants, though they are numerous in the wet weather, are confined almost entirely to German territory, at the base of the mountain below Mochi and Kiboso, and it would be necessary to get a permit to shoot them, either from the German Commissioner at Bagamoyo on the coast, or from the officer in charge of the district at Mochi. From about August to April the elephants are confined to the belts of dense forest on the mountain, at an elevation of from 7,000 to 10,000 feet, where