At length all my arrangements were finished. The men had received and spent their advanced wages, and had sobered down after the drunken spree by which they nearly always inaugurate a journey into the interior. I myself was ready and anxious to be off. I longed for the bracing air of the inland plateaux to dispel the weakening fever from which I suffered, and gladly stepped into Captain Gissing’s pretty skiff, in which the first stage of the journey might be made, for several tidal creeks extend inland from Mombasa for a distance of nearly twenty miles. My men journeyed by land, and we all met again in the vicinity of the mission station of Rabai. After one night spent with Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield at Jomvu, and a pleasant rest with the Shaws at Kisolutini, I was at length launched alone into the wilderness, rather relieved than otherwise at my unaccustomed solitude. My party consisted of one hundred and twenty men. The first day’s tramp into the interior was very trying. Owing to the scarcity of water, I had resolved to make a long march to a place called Gora, at a distance of about thirty miles from my starting point. I gave my caravan a little start ahead of me, and followed leisurely in a hammock, feeling at first too weak from fever to be able to go on foot. In fact, what with anterior weakness and a blazing sun, I felt in such a stupid condition that I hoped, during the first day of my travels, to be allowed to journey peacefully without undue exercise of energy. But it was not to be, and perhaps fortunately so, since there is nothing that dispels the languidness of fever so speedily as the necessity for vigorous action. After some hours’ easy jog-trot in my net-hammock, I came up with the bulk of my caravan, and found all the men reclining in the pleasant shade of a leafy wood. The Zanzibaris rose somewhat apologetically, and with a show of respect, but the men of Rabai and Mombasa merely looked at me with stolid unconcern, and several yawned unrestrainedly in my face when I questioned them as to the cause of this prolonged halt. The head-man of these Christian—save the mark!—porters then informed me that his men considered the walk to Gora too long to be undertaken in a day, and had chosen this pleasant spot to repose in during the sultry hours. I called on the laggards to take up their burdens and go on; I maintained that I alone had the power to order a halt; that the morning was still fresh, and that if we rested now we should never reach the water-place by nightfall—in vain, I was only met with sullen looks and murmurs of dissent.