The road was a mere foot-path, leading through fields in which naked women were at work, who looked up and laughed and giggled as they passed. Passing on, they entered an open forest, abounding in deer and antelope. Reaching the turbid Kingemi, a bridge of felled trees was soon made; Stanley, in the meantime amusing himself with shooting hippopotami, or rather shooting at them, for his small bullets made no more impression on their thick skulls than peas would have done. Crossing to the opposite shore, he found the traveling better. They arrived at Kikoka, a distance of but ten miles, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, having been compelled to unload the animals during the day, to cross the river and mud pools. This was slow marching, and at this rate of speed it would take a long time to reach the heart of Africa. The settlement was a collection of rude huts. Though bound to the same point that Speke and Burton had reached, Ujiji, Stanley took a different route from them, and one never traveled by a white man before. On the 27th, he left this place and moved westward over a rolling, monotonous country, until they came to Rosako, the province of Ukwee. Just before his departure the next morning, Magonga, the leader of the fourth caravan, came up and told him that three of his carriers were sick, and asked for some medicine. He found the three men in great terror, believing they were about to die, and crying out like children, "Mama, mama." Leaving them, with orders to hurry on as soon as possible, he departed. The country everywhere was in a state of nature except in the neighborhood of villages. Sheltered by the dense forests, he toiled on but was so anxious about the fourth caravan left behind that, after marching nine miles he ordered a halt and made a camp. It soon swarmed with insects, and he set to work to examine them and see if they were the tsetsé, said to be fatal to horses in Africa. Still waiting for the caravan, he went hunting, but soon found himself in such an impenetrable jungle and swamp, filled with alligators, that he resolved never to make the attempt again. The second and third days passing without the arrival of the caravan, he sent Shaw and Bombay back after it, who brought it up on the fourth day. Leaving it to rest in his own camp, he pushed on five miles to the village of Kingaru, set in a deep, damp, pestiferous-looking hollow, surrounded by pools of water. To add to the gloominess of the scene, a pouring rain set in, which soon filled their camping-place with lakelets and rivulets of water. Toward evening the rain ceased, and the villagers began to pour in with their vendibles. Foremost was the chief, bringing with him three measures of matama and a half a measure of rice, which he begged Stanley to accept. The latter saw through the trickery of this meagre present, in offering which the chief called him the "rich sultan." Stanley asked him why, if he was a