The track which we followed has enabled us to increase our rate of progress per hour. Along the river bank, by dint of continued work, and devoting seven, eight, nine hours--sometimes ten hours--we could travel from 3 to 7 miles. We were now enabled to make 1-1/2 to 1-3/4, and even 2 miles per hour; but the pace was still retarded by roots, stumps, climbers, llianes, convolvuli, skewers, and a multitude of streams, and green-scummed sinks. We could rarely proceed a clear hundred yards without being ordered to halt by the pioneers. Each day towards evening the clouds gathered, the thunder reverberated with awful sounds through the echoing forest; lightning darted hither and thither, daily severing some tree-top, or splitting a mighty patriarch from crown to base, or blasting some stately and kingly tree; and the rain fell with a drowning plenty which chilled and depressed us greatly in our poor blooded and anæmic state. But during the march, Providence was gracious; the sun shone, and streamed in million beams of soft light through the woods, which brightened our feelings, and caused the aisles and corridors of the woods to be of Divine beauty, converted the graceful thin tree-shafts into marbly-grey pillars, and the dew and rain-drops into sparkling brilliants; cheered the invisible birds to pour out, with spirit, their varied repertory of songs; inspired parrot flocks to vent gleeful screams and whistlings; roused hosts of monkeys to exert their wildest antics; while now and then some deep, bass roar in far-away recesses indicated a family of _soko_ or chimpanzees enjoying some savage sport. The road from Mambungu's, eastward, was full of torments, fears, and anxieties. Never were such a series of clearings as those around Mambungu, and the neighbouring settlement of Njalis. The trees were of the largest size, and timber enough had been cut to build a navy; and these lay, in all imaginable confusion, tree upon tree, log above log, branches rising in hills above hills; and amongst all this wild ruin of woods grew in profusion upon profusion bananas, plantains, vines, parasites; ivy-like plants, palms, calamus, convolvuli, etc., through which the poor column had to burrow, struggle, and sweat, while creeping, crawling, and climbing, in, through, and over obstacles and entanglements that baffle description. On the 4th November we were 13-3/4 miles from Mambungu's in the settlement of Ndugubisha, having passed, in the interval, through five deserted forest villages of pigmies.On this day I came near smiling--for I fancied I observed the dawn of happier days foretold by Uledi. Each member of the caravan received one ear of corn, and 15 plantains as rations. Fifteen plantains and one ear of corn make a royal ration compared to two ears of corn, or a handful of berries, or a dozen fungus. It was not calculated, however, to make men too cheerful, though our people were naturally light-hearted and gay.