So much has been written about the different routes into the interior that it is not necessary to enter upon them here. In the accounts that have been written, each writer’s experience has differed so materially that it would be unadvisable to rely on the opinion, based on experience, of one writer more than another, particularly if taken from the records of expeditions of a few years back. One writer may have experienced no difficulties, as both food and water may have been plentiful when he passed. Another writer may have had plenty of food and no water, and another plenty of water but no food, &c. The rainfall in East Africa is uncertain, and the supply of food and water also uncertain in consequence. Therefore all the very latest information as to the food and water supply along the line of march should be obtained at Mombasa, before leaving. The information of a man who has traversed the route about to be taken only two months previously cannot be relied upon, although his veracity is not to be doubted. Only one month’s dry weather will make an enormous difference in a water supply; but besides this there are other things to reckon against. Amongst these are the number of caravans which have subsequently passed up and down, and the number of natives from Teita and Ukambani, who are constantly going to and fro, often with herds of cattle, sheep, and goats, all of which very soon diminish even the largest supply. But when once the game country is reached, all anxiety about food and water is virtually over. It is the getting to the game countries, when long tracts of foodless and often waterless wilderness have to be traversed before the sportsman’s Eldorado is reached, that is such trying and often anxious work. The Teita route is the principal one into the interior, and is also the principal one from the sportsman’s point of view, as it leads to all the best game countries. This route passes _viâ_ Taru and Mount Maungu. The wilderness between Taru and Ndara is commonly known as the ‘Maungu march,’ and it is to this day more dreaded by both Europeans and natives alike than any other, and this more particularly when going up country, when the porters, not having recovered from their ‘high old times’ on the coast, are out of training and soft, and easily become disheartened. Coming down country with their faces to the coast, and the ‘high times’ before them, it is quite a different thing, and there is little or no anxiety, as the men will face almost anything. Unless there has been an exceptional drought or an unusual number of caravans upon the road, water is generally procurable at Taru and also at Mount Maungu, where, however, the men have to climb the hill 1,000 feet above the camping-ground to get it. Between these two points, a distance of some thirty-four miles (by the winding serpentine footpath, and not fifty-three, as some writers maintain), there is no water, excepting perhaps for a few days after heavy rain.