After the action Captain Müller shifted his camp. In the move, Lieutenant von Schroetter, who was ill with malaria, was left behind for a short time and taken prisoner by an English patrol which suddenly appeared upon the scene. When this patrol marched off to the Boma Inagu he managed to escape, and rejoined us at length, quite exhausted. But he lost all his belongings, and had nothing on his head—a very serious matter under a tropical sun. From the reports of the natives and our own patrols there was no longer room for doubt that strong enemy forces, which had disembarked at Mozambique, were marching west on the Boma Malema, and were already only a few days’ march from that place. Simultaneous reports were received that troops were also marching towards the Boma Malema from the west, the direction of Malacotera. A few days later the enemy following us from the north reached the Lurio, so we evacuated its northern bank. From captured documents and the fighting that took place on the northern bank, we judged that this hostile force was stronger than I had suspected. Thanks to its light motor transport columns it had been able to follow us up quickly with all its supply as well as a body which I estimated at about three or four battalions with auxiliary arms. The country along the river Malema in which we had our camp was quite extraordinarily fertile. The _mtama_ was perfectly ripe, and there was an abundance of tomatoes, bananas, sweet potatoes (_batatas_) and other fruits. The food was also very varied. Game and fish were plentiful. The natives knew the German troops from previous acquaintance, and were very friendly. When I rode from one detachment to another the women came running out of their houses to see the “Njama” (animal, game, flesh), a creature quite unknown to them. I was riding a horse, of course! The fertile country was so extensive that we could not even approximately exploit or protect it. We could not prevent it supplying the necessities of life to the large number of Askari and non-combatants with our enemies, as well as ourselves. We could not deprive the enemy of the possibility of also making this prolific region in a large measure into a new base and shortening his line of supply. From our point of view the country was, if anything, too fertile and we were not in a position, as on earlier occasions, to exploit it to such an extent before we left that it was insufficient to support the enemy masses. But at any rate it had the result that for the moment we were very mobile as, thanks to our sojourn of several weeks, our wounded and sick were so far recovered that all, even the inmates of the field hospitals, were quite fit for marching.