After a day’s halt at Ndabi we resumed the journey on the 29th August. The path crossed a high and stony hill-shoulder, where the bleak raw air caused one of the porters to lie down torpid like a frozen man. It then stretched over gradually rising and falling ground to a dense bush of cactaceæ and milk-bush, aloetic plants and thorns, based upon a surface of brickdust-red. Beyond this point lay another plateau of wavy surface, producing dwarfed and wind-wrung calabashes, and showing grain-fields carefully and laboriously ridged with the hoe. Flocks and herds now appeared in all directions. The ground was in some places rust-coloured, in others dazzlingly white with a detritus of granite; mica glittered like silver-filings in the sun, and a fine silky grass waved in the wind, bleached clean of colour by the glowing rays. This plateau ended in a descent with rapid slopes, over falls and steps of rock and boulder into the basin of the Rumuma River. It is a southern influent, or a bifurcation of the Mukondokwa, and it drains the hills to the south-west of the Rumuma district, whereas the main stream, arising in the highlands of the Wahumba or Wamusai, carries off the waters of the lands on the west. Losing our way, we came upon this mountain-torrent, which swirls through blocks and boulders under stiff banks of red earth densely grown with brush and reeds; and to find the kraal we were obliged to travel up the bed-side, through well-hoed fields irrigated by raised water-courses. The khambi was badly situated in the dwarf hollow between the river and the hills, and having lately been tenanted, as the smoking embers showed, it was uncleanly in the extreme. It was heart-breaking to see the asses that day. I left them to Said bin Salim, who, with many others, did not appear till eventide.