On the next day the fifty-five men returned from Stairs with a note reporting all was well at Ituri, and that he was hopeful of a pacific conclusion to the negotiations with the natives of Kandokoré, and on the 4th of the month at noon we moved from Cross Roads Camp. Six hours’ march on the 5th brought us to West Indenduru. The 6th we reached Central Indenduru, and on the 7th we were in the Bakwuru village at the foot of Pisgah, in view of the grass-land, at which the men of the rear column and the Manyuema were never tired of gazing and wondering. On the 9th we crossed the Ituri River and established a camp in the village of Kandekoré on the east side. The next day all hands were set to work to make a camp, to clear the bush around, for natives are accustomed to let it grow right up to the eaves of their huts to enable them to retreat unperceived in case of danger. In the evening after dinner Lieutenant Stairs and Surgeon Parke were called to my tent, and I addressed them as to their duties during my absence. Said I-- “Gentlemen, I have called you to give you a few parting words. “You know as well as I do that there is a constant unseen influence at work creating an anxiety which has sometimes tempted us to despair. No plan, however clear and intelligible it may be, but is thwarted and reversed. No promises are fulfilled, instructions are disregarded, suggestions are unavailing, and so we are constantly labouring to correct and make amends for this general waywardness which pursues us. We are no sooner out of one difficulty than we are face to face with another, and we are subjected to everlasting stress and strains of appalling physical miseries, and absolute decimation. It is as clear to you as to me why these things are so. They will go on and continue so, unless I can gather the fragments of this Expedition together once and for all, and keep it together, never to be separated again. But each time I have wished to do so, the inability of the men to march, the necessity of hurrying to one place and then to another, keep us eternally detached. After bringing the rear column, and uniting it with the advance, and collecting your garrison at Fort Bodo, we are astonished at this total absence of news from Jephson and the Pasha. Now I cannot manœuvre with a hospital in tow, such as we have with us. At the muster of to-day, after inspection, there were 124 men suffering from ulcers, debility, weakness, dysentery, and much else. They cannot march, they cannot carry. Jephson and the Pasha are perhaps waiting for me. It is now January 10th, I promised to be on the Nyanza again, even if I went as far as Yambuya, by the 16th, I have six days before me. You see how I am pulled this way and that way. If I could trust you to obey me, obey every word literally, that you would not swerve one iota from the