While I pitied the natives who had lost their property when they least deserved it, I could not remove from my memory that extended fast in the area of desolation and forest wilderness stretching between the Basopo Rapids and Ibwiri, on the edge of which we were even now located, or their patient obedience--thefts and small practices notwithstanding, their unfaltering fidelity, their kindness to us while we were starving, in bestowing upon us the choicest and finest of the wild fruit they had discovered, and their altogether courageous bearing and noble hopefulness during the terrible days of adversity; all these virtues must needs extenuate their offences, and it was best to await fulness and reflection to assist us in reclaiming them into tractableness and good order. Every mile or two almost of that hungry forest solitude between the Ihuru and Ituri confluence and Ipoto had been marked by the dead bodies of their comrades; there they lay fast mildewing and rotting in the silent gloom, and, but for the fidelity of the survivors, none of those capable of giving intelligent testimony of the stern trials endured during September, October, and the half of November, would have lived to relate the sad and sorrowful details. The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal. Fully and regularly fed, he is a being capable of being coaxed or coerced to exertion of any kind, love and fear sway him easily, he is not averse to labour however severe; but when starved it is well to keep in mind the motto "Cave Canem," for a starving lion over a raw morsel of beef is not so ferocious or so ready to take offence. Rigid discipline, daily burdens, and endless marching into regions of which they were perfectly ignorant, never seemed to gall our men much when their stomachs were pampered, and abundant provender for their digestive organs were provided; but even hanging unto death was only a temporary damper to their inclination to excessive mischief when pinched with hunger. The aborigines also of Ibwiri surrounded by plenty are mild and meek enough through pure sleekness, but the dwarfish nomads of the forest are, I am told, as fierce as beasts of prey, and fight till their quivers are empty. I received word on the 12th that Khamis, the Manyuema who was supposed to have gone for my gratification to explore the country ahead, and to make friends with the aid of the natives, had, owing to perverseness, been unable to accomplish his mission; that he was greatly disappointed, and that he had been attacked by the natives of East Ibwiri and had lost two men. I sent word to him to return. The fleas of Ibwiri became so intolerable that in order to obtain rest, I had to set my tent in the open street.