Mr. Bonny was despatched with twenty-eight men past the Ngaiyu, to verify my hope that a landing-place I had observed in passing and repassing would lead to the discovery of a road by which I could avoid the devastated wilderness that stretched for nearly 200 miles along the south bank between the Basopo Rapids and Ibwiri. Mr. Bonny, after returning, was pleased to express his surprise at the marvellous dexterity and agility of the scouts, who sprang with the lightness of springing bush antelopes over every kind of impediment, and who in almost every thousand paces gained five hundred ahead of him. A mile and a half from the landing-place on the north bank he had found a fine village surrounded by rich groves of plantains. To this village, called Bavikai, we proceeded more in the hope that we could utilize some road going north-easterly, whence, after sixty miles or so, we could strike on a bee-line course for the Albert. As the men were being transported across the river opposite the landing-place of the Bavikai on the 4th, I saw a dozen Madis in a terrible condition from the ravages of the small-pox, and crowding them, until they jostled them in admirable unconcern, were some two dozen of the tribe as yet unaffected by the disease. This little fact put me on a line of reflections which, had a first-class shorthand writer been near, might have been of value to other thoughtless persons. Never did ignorance appear to me so foolish. Its utter unsuspectingness was pitiful. Over these human animals I saw the shadow of Death, in the act to strike. But I said to myself, I see the terrible shade over them ready to smite them with the disease which will make them a horror, and finally kill them. When I fall also it will probably be from some momentary thoughtlessness, when I shall either be too absorbed, or too confident to observe the dark shadow impending over me. However, _Mambu Kwa Mungu_, neither they nor I can avoid our fate. Among my notes on the 5th of October I find a few remarks about Malaria. While we have travelled through the forest region we have suffered less from African fevers, than we did in the open country between Mataddi and Stanley Pool. A long halt in the forest clearings soon reminds us that we are not yet so acclimated as to utterly escape the effects of malaria. But when within the inclosed woods our agues are of a very mild form, soon extinguished by a timely dose of quinine. On the plateau of Kavalli and Undussuma, Messrs. Jephson, Parke, and myself were successively prostrated by fever, and the average level of the land was over 4500 feet above the sea. On descending to the Nyanza plain, 2500 feet lower, we were again laid up with fierce attacks. At Banana Point, which is at sea-level, ague is only too common. At Boma, 80 feet higher, the ague is more common still. At Vivi, there were more cases than elsewhere, and the station was about 250 feet higher than Boma, and not a swamp was near it.