“Allah ho Akbar,” was the cry that rang through the gloom, from a man with a breaking heart. The words went pealing along through the dark, and they roused the echoes of “God is great” within me. Why should a Moslem recall a Christian to thoughts of his God? “Ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” And, lo! worthier thoughts possess the mind, the straining of the eyes through the darkness is relaxed, and the sight is inverted to see dumb witnesses of past mercies on this or that forgotten occasion; one memory begets another, until the stubborn heart is melted, and our needs are laid as upon a tablet before the Great Deliverer. Towards morning I dozed, to spring up a few hours later as the darkness was fading, and a ghostly light showed the still groups of my companions. “Up, boys, up! to the plantains! up! Please God we shall have plantains to-day!” This was uttered to cheer the sad hearts. Within a few minutes we had filed away from our earthy couches, and were on the track in the cheerless light of the morning, some hobbling from sores, some limping from ulcers, some staggering from weakness. We had commenced to feel warmed up with the motion of the march, when, hark! I heard a murmur of voices ahead. Little Saburi held the rifle ready, observant of the least sign of the hand, when I saw a great pile of green fruit rising above the broad leaves of the phrynia that obstructed a clear view, and intuitively one divined that this must be the column of foragers advancing to meet us, and in a second of time, the weak, the lame, and the cripple, the limping and moaning people forgot their griefs and their woes, and shouted the grateful chant which goes up of its own accord towards the skies out of the full and sensitive hearts, “Thanks be to God.” Englishman and African, Christian and Pagan, all alike confess Him. He is not here, or there, but everywhere, and the heart of the grateful man confesseth Him. It needed only one view of the foremost men to have told what the heedless, thoughtless herd had been doing. It was no time for reproaches, however, but to light fires, sit down and roast the green fruit, and get strength for the return, and in an hour we were swinging away back again to Starvation Camp, where we arrived at 2.30 P.M., to be welcomed as only dying men can welcome those who lend the right hand to help them. And all that afternoon young and old, Zanzibari and Manyuema, Soudanese and Madi, forgot their sorrows of the past in the pleasures of the present, and each vowed to be more provident in the future--until the next time. [Sidenote: 1888. Dec. 17. Ihuru River.]