difficult to conceive the purpose for which this plague was placed in a land so eminently fitted for breeding cattle and for agriculture, which without animals cannot be greatly extended, except as an exercise for human ingenuity to remove. Possibly at some future day, when the country becomes valuable, the tzetze may be exterminated by the introduction of some insectivorous bird, which will be the greatest benefactor that Central Africa ever knew. After about an hour’s march, the narrow tunnel in the jungle--it was so close that only one ass could be led up and unloaded at a time--debouched upon the Mukondokwa ford. The view was not unpleasing. The swift brown stream was broadened by a branch-islet in its upper bed to nearly a hundred yards, and its margins were fringed with rushes backed by a screen of dense verdure and tall trees which occupied the narrow space between the water and the hills. The descent and the landing-place were equally bad. Slipping down the steep miry bank the porters sank into the river breast-deep, causing not a little damage to their loads: the ford now wetted the waist then the knee, and the landing-place was a kind of hippopotamus-run of thick slushy mud, floored with roots and branches, snags and sawyers, and backed by a quagmire rendered passable only by its matwork of tough grass-canes laid by their own weight. Having crossed over on our men’s backs, we ascended a little rise and lay down somewhat in the condition of travelling Manes fresh from the transit of the Styx. I ordered back Kidogo with a gang of porters to assist Said bin Salim who was bringing up the rear: he promised to go but he went the wrong way--forwards. Resuming our march along the river’s left or northern bank, we wound along the shoulders and the bases of hills, sometimes ascending the spurs of stony and jungly eminences, where the paths were unusually rough and precipitous, at other times descending into the stagnant lagoons, the reedy and rushy swamps, and the deep bogs which margin the stream. After a total of six hours we reached a kraal situated upon the sloping ground at the foot of the northern walls which limit the grassy river basin: through this the Mukondokwa flows in a dark turbid stream now narrowed to about forty feet. The district of “Kadetamare” was formerly a provisioning station where even cattle were purchaseable, a rare exception to the rule in the smaller settlements of Usagara. I at once sent men to collect rations, none, however, were procurable: meeting a small party that were bringing grain from Rumuma, they learned that there was a famine in the land.