In speaking, also, of his followers at this time, it appears that the explorer experienced considerable trouble with some of them. He pays great compliments for the invaluable services rendered him by Frank and Edward Pocock and Frederick Barker in endeavoring to harmonize the large, unruly mob, with its many eccentricities and unassimilating natures. “Quarrels were frequent,” he says, “sometimes dangerous, between various members of the expedition, and at such critical moments only did my personal interference become imperatively necessary. What with taking solar observations and making ethnological notes, negotiating with chiefs about the tribute moneys and attending to the sick, my time was occupied from morning till night. In addition to all this strain on my own physical powers, I was myself frequently sick from fever, and wasted from lack of proper, nourishing food; and if the chief of an expedition be thus distressed, it may readily be believed that the poor fellows depending on him suffer also.” On the 1st of January, 1875, Stanley struck north, thus leaving for the first time the path to Unyanyembe, the common highway of East Central Africa. The next halt was made at Mtiwi, the chief of which was Malewa. “The last night spent at this place was a disturbed one,” says Stanley; “the flood-gates of heaven seemed literally opened for a period. After an hour’s rainfall, six inches of water covered our camp, and a slow current ran southerly. Every member of the expedition was distressed, and even the Europeans, lodged in tents, were not exempt from the evils of the night. My tent walls enclosed a little pool, banked by boxes of stores and ammunition. Hearing cries outside, I lit a candle, and my astonishment was great to find that my bed was an island in a shallow river, which, if it increased in depth and current, would assuredly carry me off south towards the Rufiji. My walking-boots were miniature barks, floating to and fro on a turbid tide seeking a place of exit to the dark world of waters without. My guns, lashed to the centre pole, were stock deep in water. But the most comical sight was presented by Jack and Bull, perched back to back on the top of an ammunition box, butting each other rearward, and snarling and growling for that scant portion of comfort. “In the morning I discovered my fatigue cap several yards outside the tent, and one of my boots down south. The harmonium, a present for Mtesa, a large quantity of gunpowder, tea, rice and sugar, were destroyed. Vengeance appeared to have overtaken us. At 10 A. M. the sun appeared, astonished, no doubt, at a new lake formed during his absence. By noon the water had considerably decreased, and permitted us to march, and with glad hearts we surmounted the upland of Uyanzi, and from our busy camp, on the afternoon of January 4th, gazed upon the spacious plain beneath, and the vast broad region of sterility and thorns which we had known as inhospitable Ugogo.”