On the 7th of May he was joined there by Mr. Overweg, and the two travellers immediately made their preparations for resuming the work of exploration with which they had been charged by the British Government. These were completed by the 29th of May (1851), and the two travellers then set out for the southward, accompanied by an officer of the sheikh, and attended by a small company of servants and warriors. A singular variety of country greeted them as they moved forward: at first it was low and swampy; then came a bare and arid soil, planted with scattered tamarisks; next, a dense forest, partly inundated in the rainy season, and, afterwards, a broad and fertile plain, sprinkled with villages, and white with thriving crops of cotton. This was the district of Uji, which comprises several places of a considerable size. Thence they entered upon a fine open country, a continuous corn-field, interrupted only by pleasant villages, and shaded here and there by single monkey-bread trees, or Adansonias, and various kinds of fig-trees, with their succulent dark-green foliage, or large fleshy leaves of emerald green. A fiumara, or water-course, which rises near Aláwó, traverses the plain with numerous curves and bends, and passing Dekùa, falls into the Tchad. The travellers crossed it twice before they reached Mabani, a large and prosperous town, with a population of nine or ten thousand souls, which covers the sides and summit of a hill of sand. From this point their road lay through fertile fields, where they were greeted by the sight of the first corn-crop of the season, its fresh and vivid green sparkling daintily in the sunshine. Having crossed and recrossed the fiumara, they ascended its steep left bank, which in some places exhibited regular strata of sandstone. Here they passed a little dyeing-yard of two or three pots, while several patches of indigo flourished at the foot of the bank, and a bustling group of men and cattle were gathered round the well. Villages were seen lying about in every direction; and single cottages, scattered about here and there, gave evidence of a sense of security. The corn-fields were most agreeably broken by tracts covered with bushes of the wild gónda, which has a most delicious fruit, of a fine creamy flavour, and of the size of a peach, but with a much larger stone.