On the 27th August we resumed our way under fresh difficulties. The last march had cost us another ass. Muhinna, a donkey-driver, complaining of fever, had been mounted by Kidogo without my permission, and had summarily departed, thus depriving us of the services of a second, whilst all were in a state of weakness which compelled them to walk at their slowest pace. On the other hand, the men of the caravan, hungry and suffering from raw south-east wind and the chilly cold, the result not of low temperature but of humidity and extensive evaporation, were for pushing forward as fast as possible. The path was painful, winding along the shoulders of stony and bushy hills, with rough re-entering angles, and sometimes dipping down into the valley of the Mukondokwa, which, hard on the right, spread out in swamps, nearly two miles broad, temporary where they depended upon rain, and permanent where their low levels admitted of free infiltration. On the steep eminences to the left of the path rose tall and thick the thorny aloetic and cactaceous growth of arid Somaliland; the other side was a miniature of the marine lagoons, the creeks, and the bayous of green Zanzibar. After three hours of hard marching, the labour came to its crisis, where the path, breaking off at a right angle from the river, wound up an insecure ladder of loose earth and stones, which caused several porters and one ass to lose their footing, and to roll with their loads through the thorny bushes of the steep slope, near the off side, into the bed of rushes below. Then leaving the river-valley on the right, we fell into a Fiumara of deep loose sand, about a hundred yards broad, and occupying the centre of a widening table-land. The view now changed, and the “wady” afforded pleasant glimpses of scenery. Its broad, smooth and glistening bed, dinted by the footprints of cattle, was bounded by low perpendicular banks of stiff red clay, margined by mighty masses of brilliant green tamarinds, calabashes, and sycomores, which stood sharply out against the yellow stubbles beyond them. The Mkuyu or sycomore in Eastern Africa is a magnificent tree; the bole, composed of a pillared mass, averages from eight to ten feet in height, and the huge branches, thatched with thick cool foliage, extend laterally, overshadowing a circle whose perimeter, when the sun is vertical, sometimes attains five hundred feet. The fruit, though eaten by travellers, is a poor berry, all rind and seeds, with a slender title to the name of fig. There are apparently two varieties of this tree, resembling each other in general appearance, but differing in details. The Mtamba has a large, heavy, and fleshy leaf; its fruit is not smooth like that of the Mkuyu, but knobbed with green excrescences, and the bole is loftier than the common sycomore’s trunk. The roots of the older trees, rising above the earth, draw up a quantity of mould which, when the wood is decayed or destroyed, forms the dwarf mounds that in many