On arrival at Karonga I was much disappointed to find that Sharp, tired of waiting, had left two days before to try and arrange transport on Tanganyika. As it was the season for sowing their crops, very few carriers were available, and it was evident that I should have to wait some time before I could obtain sufficient men to transport our loads. I commenced operations by repacking all the food-boxes and discarding everything that was not absolutely necessary, as well as the considerable quantity of stuff that had spoilt through being improperly packed. The firm responsible, either as a practical joke or an experiment in the cultivation of fungus, had packed chocolate in paper wrappers and laid them in hay in a leaky wooden box. As a practical joke it was weak, but as a venture in fungi-culture a complete success. In fact, unpacking the boxes reminded me forcibly of the days when, as a youthful disciple of Isaac Walton, I used to dig for worms in the garden manure-heap. A series of remarkable tins of sausages added materially to the excitement of these excavations, one and all having assumed the outward and visible form of a Rugby football; while as to the inward invisible grace, I was careful to throw them down wind, when they exploded on contact with the ground in a manner most satisfactory, to the utter consternation of six Kaffir dogs and a hyæna. They, having followed up the wind of the first (a comparatively mild one), were so overcome by its successors that they clapped their tails between their legs, and, with a dismal howl, fled, convinced of the superiority of the white man, even in what they had hitherto considered the black man’s monopoly. Native rumour has it that they are running still. Having arranged everything and reduced the loads to a minimum, I succumbed to a dose of fever, and spent Christmas Day in bed, on a cup of tea. Dr. Castellote, the medical officer of Mr. Mohun’s expedition, was most kind, and when I had sufficiently recovered, we went out together for a few days’ shooting on the River Songwe, which, flowing into the extreme north-western point of Lake Nyassa, forms part of the Anglo-German boundary-line.