only travelled very slowly and our ship was further than it looked from the shore. From within a few yards of the water's edge to the base of a precipitous slope, some 200 yards distant, which in places was a sheer cliff, some 300 or 400 feet high, the ground was covered with bush and large banana-plantations, amongst which were scattered a few large and comfortable-looking native huts. Had the Germans only known that we were going to attempt a landing at this spot and brought a machine-gun to the top of the cliff, or had they even lined the top of the cliff with riflemen, they would probably have been able to kill every man in the closely packed boats, and sunk the latter before they reached the shore. Luckily they did not know where we were going to land, until too late, for once on shore, we worked our way as quickly as possible through the banana-plantations, and gained the top of the cliff unopposed. We were only just in time, however, as we were soon engaged with the enemy's forces, which, having now become aware of our intentions, were rapidly advancing to meet us. The disembarkation of B, C, and D Companies (100 men each) of our battalion was now proceeding rapidly, and the advance towards the town commenced.[69] It is impossible for me to attempt to give any general idea of the whole engagement, which lasted for two days, and I can only tell you some of my own experiences and impressions. We fought in a long thin skirmishing line, which extended from the sea to over a mile inland, and slowly and gradually pushed our opponents back towards Bukoba. On the right of our frontiersmen were 300 men of the Loyal North Lancashire regiment, and somewhere--I believe near the sea-shore, though I must confess that I never saw them--was a contingent of the King's African Rifles--native African troops, commanded by white officers. Our whole force was supported by four guns of an Indian Mountain Battery (the 28th) and four machine-guns. The forces opposed to us were undoubtedly very inferior to ours numerically, and consisted, I think, entirely of well-trained and well-armed native and Arab troops, commanded by German commissioned and non-commissioned officers, and a number of German civilian sharpshooters (men who no doubt have done a lot of big game hunting) armed with sporting rifles, fitted with hair-triggers and telescopic sights. With these rifles they used soft-nosed expanding bullets.[70] They had two cannons, I do not know of what calibre,[71] but of quite a considerable range and two machine-guns. But in another way our opponents had a very great advantage over us, as they had the benefit of the most splendid cover, banana-plantations, patches of thick bush, and bits of ground strewn with rocks, against which we had to advance in the open.