About noon the fair scene vanished as if by enchantment. We suddenly turned northwards into a tangled mass of tall fetid reeds, rank jungle and forest, with its decaying trunks encroaching upon the hole-pierced goat-track that zigzaged towards the Myombo River. This perennial stream rises, according to the guides, in an elevation opposite to the highlands of Dut’humi. It is about fifty feet broad at the ford, breast-deep, and the swift brown waters swirl under a canopy of the trees whose name it bears. The “Myombo” is a fine specimen of African timber, apparently unknown to the people of Zanzibar, but extending almost from the coast to the Lake Regions. The flower is greenish, with the overpowering smell of the Indian jasmines; the fruit is a large pod, containing ten or twelve long hard acorns, of a brown-black colour, set in cups which resemble red sealing-wax. The coarse bark is used for building huts and kraals, the inner fibre for “bast” and ropes, and the wood makes what Easterns call a hot fire, lasting long, and burning well out. After the fiery sun and the dry atmosphere of the plains, the sudden effect of the dank and clammy chill, the result of exceeding evaporation, under the impervious shades that line the river banks, was overpowering. In such places one feels as if poisoned by miasma; a shudder runs through the frame; and a cold perspiration, like the prelude for a fainting-fit, breaks from the brow. Unloading the asses, and fording the stream, we ascended the left bank, and occupied a kraal, with fires still smoking, on its summit. Though another porter was left behind with small-pox, I had little difficulty with the luggage on this march: the more I worked the men, the harder they worked. Besides, they seldom fell sick on the road, though often prostrated when halting, a phenomenon which my companion explained by their hard eating and little exercise when stationary, and which Said bin Salim more mercifully attributed to the fatigue and exposure of the journey taking effect when the excitement had passed away.