The advance of our main body on Ili was contested by considerable hostile patrols which were approaching the Alto-Moloque-Ili road from the north. One of these patrols was immediately pursued energetically and attacked in its camp, but I gained the impression that larger enemy forces were advancing on us from the north of Ili and Alto-Moloque. I had no intention of delaying, but wished rather to join up as soon as possible with Müller’s detachment, which was on its way to Lugella. Accordingly I marched south, skirting Ili and occupied the Portuguese post of Nampepo. In this district, at about a day’s march from each other, the Portuguese companies had established a number of clean, well-arranged stations around which lay the fields, which they cultivated. A whole series of these posts and their field-depots fell into our hands during the march. Nampepo was one of them, only larger than usual, and the centre of an extraordinarily fertile district. A special feature of the Nampepo camp was our chase after domestic pigs. Large numbers of these were running loose in the bush, so that we had excellent sausages to eat, as well as roast pork and brawn. A German planter named Hauter, from the district of Morogoro, who had delivered large supplies of sausages to Morogoro during the war, had acquired expert skill in preparing them, and this now came in very useful. He now had the insides of pigs to practise on instead of the insides of cows, and our enjoyment of this unwonted luxury was so great that we did not allow ourselves to be disturbed even by the shots that fell into our camp. For as a matter of fact a considerable enemy column from the north was approaching the station of Nampepo, which was held by Captain Spangenberg with our outposts. From the commanding ground the approach of a large enemy column could be noted quite easily. As a particularly favourable opportunity for attacking it presented itself we did not disturb the enemy in his approach. However, contrary to expectation, he did not attack us. Pillars of smoke arising from the bush about 1,500 yards away showed us that he had encamped there. Our patrols which went round the enemy crawled up to his camp at night and fired into it. Koehl’s detachment had come up meanwhile and I marched off with the main body to follow Müller’s detachment in the direction of Lugella. Captain Spangenberg remained with our rearguard in touch with the enemy, and then followed us at a distance of a day’s march.