Under date the 20th of July I find the following note in my diary:-- “This morning the fever that laid me low passed away. I have been a little premature in saying that we were recovering from the ill effects of that Usongora pit-water. No sooner is one of us well than another is prostrated. The Pasha and I have been now three times down with severe fever at the same time. Stairs’ fever left him yesterday. Bonny’s temperature has been normal the last two days. Casati fell ill on the 17th, was abed all day on the 18th, and was up on the 19th. This is the way we exist now. There are constant relapses into fever, with two or three days of insecure health in the interval. Khamis Wadi Nassib has also died of paralysis; and a Nubian has disappeared. “Four Egyptian officers have begged me, on account of their increasing ulcers, to be permitted to stay in Ankori. As we are already loaded with sick whites and other Egyptians, feeble old women and children, I am obliged to yield to their entreaties, and they and their families will therefore stay here. As I expect the Heir-apparent of Ankori daily to go through the process of blood-brotherhood, I will be able to provide for their comfort. [Sidenote: 1889. July 20. Rusussu.] “It is a peculiar climate, this of Ankori. The cold gusty winds sweeping from E. to S.E., and then N.E., create chest affections; there is universal coughing, catarrhs, headaches; the great variation between maximum and minimum temperature makes us all unusually feverish. Yet I remember, in Jan., 1876, my followers and myself were healthy and vigorous while crossing North Ankori, and my private journals contain no notes like these I jot down daily. Perhaps this excessive sickness is owing to the season, or to that deadly pit-water, or it may be our cooks employ the black water of the Rwizi, which drains a putrefying compost. It is the winter season now, whereas January is spring. “Dangers have less charms for the ear than distance creates for the eye. The former is too often exaggerated out of all proportion to the reality by the unrestrained tongue, while the latter, though often hiding the hideousness of ravines, and the inaccessibility of mountains or abysmal depths, glozes the whole with grace, flowing contours, and smooth lines. We have frequently found it to be so on this Expedition, and I fear the Egyptians who have disappeared from the column, un-recommended by us, will find the dangers far more real than they imagined would be the case as we repeated our frequent warnings.”