The path fell easily westwards down a long grassy and jungly incline, cut by several water-courses. About noon, I lay down half-fainting in the sandy bed of the Muhama Nullah--the “Palmetto,” or “Fan-palm;” and retaining Wazira and Mabruki, I urged the caravan forwards, that my companion might send me back a hammock from the halting-place. Suddenly appeared the whole body of deserters shouldering--as porters and asses had been taken from them--their luggage, which outwardly consisted of cloth, dirty rags, green skins, old earthen pots, and greasy gourds and calabashes. They led me to a part of the nullah where stagnant water was found, and showing abundant penitence, they ever and anon attempted excuses, which were reserved for consideration. At 3 P.M., no hammock appearing, I remounted, and pursued a path over rolling ground, with masses of dwarf-hill flanking a low bottom, which renewed the scenery of the “Slough of Despond”--Zungomero. Again the land, matted with putrid grass, displayed the calabash and the hyphæna, the papaw and the palmetto; the holcus and maize were of luxuriant dimensions, and deep rat-holes, enlarged by the boy-hunters, broke the grassy path. I found two little villages, inhabitated by Wangindo and Mandandu immigrants from the vicinity of Kilwa. Then appeared on a hill-side the Kraal in which the caravan had halted; the party had lost the road, and had been dispersed by a swarm of wild bees, an accident even more frequent in East Africa than in India. Next morning the Baloch were harangued; they professed themselves profoundly penitent, and attributing their unsoldier-like conduct to opium, and to the Wiswas, the temptations of Sathanas, they promised to reform. The promise was kept till we reached Ugogi. They were, however, always an encumbrance; they did no good beyond creating an impression, and “making the careless Æthiopians afraid.” I saw them, it is true, in their worst colours. They held themselves to be servants of their prince, and as no Eastern man can or will serve two masters, they forfeited all claim to their sole good quality--manageability. As men, they had no stamina; after a few severe marches they murmured that “Famine, despair, thirst, cold, and heat, Had done their work on them by turns.”