Our condition at the river camp was this. We had thirty-nine canoemen and boatmen, twenty-eight sick people, three Europeans, and three boys, and one of the Europeans (Lieutenant Stairs) was suffering from a dangerous wound, and required the constant care of the surgeon. One man had died of dysentery at Avisibba. We had a dying idiot in camp, who had become idiotic some days before. We had twenty-nine suffering from pleurisy, dysentery, incurable debility, and eight suffering from wounds. One called Khalfan was half strangled with the wound in his windpipe, another called Saadi, wounded in the arm, appeared dangerously ill, his arm was swollen, and gave him great pain. Out of the thirty-nine available I had despatched three separate parties in different directions to scout for news of the missing column, lest it was striking across some great bend to reach the river a long distance higher up, while we, unable to stir, were on the other side of the curve. Across the river the people of Itiri, perceiving we were so quiet on our side of the river, seemed to be meditating an attack, and only two miles below on our bank was the large settlement of Mabengu, from whose inhabitants we might hear at any moment, while our little force of thirty-nine men, scattered in various directions, were searching for the missing 300. But the poet said that it became "No man to nurse despair; But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms To follow the worthiest till he die." [Illustration: THE RIVER COLUMN ASCENDING THE ARUWIMI RIVER WITH "ADVANCE" AND SIXTEEN CANOES.] I quote from my diary of August 18th. The idiot fell asleep last night. His troubles are over, and we have buried him. I wonder if Tennyson were here, who wrote such noble lines, what he would think of our state. A few days ago I was chief of 370 men, rich in goods, munitions of war, medicines, and contented with such poor comforts as we had, and to-day I have actually only eighteen men left fit for a day's march, the rest have vanished. I should be glad to know where. If 389 picked men, such as we were when we left Yambuya, are unable to reach Lake Albert, how can Major Barttelot with 250 men make his way through this endless forest. We have travelled, on an average, 8 hours per day for forty-four days since leaving Yambuya. At two miles per hour we ought, by this date, to have arrived on the Lake shore, but, instead of being there, we have accomplished just a third of the distance. The poet says we must not "nurse despair," for to do that is to lie down and die, to make no effort, and abandon hope. Our wounded take considerable time to heal. The swelling is increasing, the wounds are most painful, not one has yet proved fatal, but they are all quite incapacitated from duty.