In spite of the various withdrawals we had recently carried out, the spirit of the troops was good, and the Askaris were imbued with a justifiable pride in their achievements against an enemy so greatly superior. Only a very few individuals deserted, and they were almost without exception men whose cattle was in the territory now occupied by the enemy, and who were therefore afraid of losing their property. Almost the entire German civil population had left the Kilima Njaro country; most of them had moved to Usambara into the Wilhelmstal district. The Arusha country had also been evacuated, and the farmers had moved off by ox-wagon by Kondoa-Irangi to Dodoma. The numerous Greeks had for the most part remained on their coffee-plantations on Kilima Njaro, and the Boers of British nationality had stayed in their cattle farms, which extended from the north-west slopes of Kilima Njaro northwards round Meru Mountain and along the western slopes of the latter to the vicinity of Arusha. At Lembeni the regular course of existence had not been interrupted; supply trains rolled right up to the station; the companies which were not in the front line worked diligently at their training, and Headquarters continued its work in the railway station buildings of Lembeni just as it had done previously at Moshi. Airmen appeared and dropped bombs, just as before. The country was carefully prepared to meet various possible battle conditions, passages were cut through the dense rhinoceros bush, and a field of fire cleared where necessary. Personal reconnaissance took up much of my time, and often led me to the companies encamped in the thick bush and on the dominating heights. The troops had already developed to a tolerable degree in adaptability, and in the art of making the material side of their existence as comfortable as possible. I remember with pleasure the occasions when, in a comfortably arranged grass hut, I was offered a cup of coffee with beautiful rich milk, prepared from the ground-down kernel of a ripe cocoanut. The North Pare Mountains also were frequently the goal of my expeditions. Up there I found a rich and well-watered area of primeval forest, through which it was hardly possible to penetrate off the roads. The water-supply of the country proved to be far more plentiful than the results of former surveys had led us to expect; in this respect also it was shown how the necessities of war cause the resources of a country to be opened up, and utilized to an extent greatly exceeding previous estimates. The natives of North Pare are, like those of Kilima Njaro, masters in the art of irrigating their fields by means of the water coming down from the mountains.