Whenever duty gave us a chance we arranged for change and recuperation. On Sundays we often went out together near New Moshi for a cheery day’s shooting. Both carriers and Askari soon picked up their business as beaters, and drove the game towards us in exemplary order, with loud shouts of “Huyu, huyu:” “There he is.” For variety of game the country provided more than one would be likely to find anywhere in Europe: hare, various dwarf antelopes, guinea-fowl, several relatives of the partridge, duck, bush-buck, water-buck, lynx, several kinds of wild boar, small kudu, jackal and many other kinds of game abounded. Once, I remember, to my astonishment, a lion silently appeared fifteen paces in front of me. Unfortunately I had my gun in my hand, and before I could put up my rifle, which was on my knees, he had as silently disappeared. In the teeming Kilima Njaro country, and even more east of Taveta, our shooting expeditions provided a welcome increase to our meat supply. But in the main this depended on the cattle which the Masai brought us from the Kilima Njaro and Meru country, but which also came from far away near Lake Victoria. CHAPTER VI FURTHER HEAVY FIGHTING IN THE NORTH-EAST BY the time we kept Christmas in the Mission Church at New Moshi, and afterwards in our mess in the Railway Station, the military situation north of Tanga had become sufficiently acute to indicate that decisive events in this quarter were probable. During the last days of December, our patrols, who in that district were on British territory, had been gradually pushed back, and had concentrated south of Jassini, on German territory. The combined force amounted to two companies and a corps of some two hundred Arabs. The enemy had obviously been reinforced, and occupied the buildings of the German plantation of Jassini. It looked as though he intended to push gradually forward along the coast to Tanga, securing the occupied country by a system of block-houses. In order to investigate matters on the spot, I travelled early in January with Capt. von Hammerstein to Tanga, and thence by car to Capt. Adler’s camp at Mwurnoni, using the newly-completed coast road to the north, a distance of thirty-eight miles. Lieut. Bleeck, of the Reserve, whose numerous successful patrols in that country rendered him particularly suitable for the purpose, accompanied me on my reconnaissance, from which I learned that the country for miles round Jassini consisted principally of a cocoanut plantation belonging to the German East African Company, which was also planted with sisal, a species of agave with sharp thorns. This sisal, which formed a dense undergrowth among the palms, was in many places so interlaced that one could only force one’s way through by enduring a quantity of very unpleasant pricks. It is, of course, always difficult to make plans for an action in country so totally unknown to one without the aid of a map, and relying only on the reports of patrols.