prepared official papers and maps for the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and I again indented upon the Consul and the Collector of Customs for drugs, medical comforts, and an extra supply of cloth and beads, to the extent of 400 dollars, for which a cheque upon my agents in Bombay was enclosed. The Arabs took leave of us on the 2nd September. I charged them repeatedly not to spread reports of our illness, and I saw them depart with regret. It had really been a relief to hear once more the voice of civility and sympathy. The great labour still remained. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with a dogged despair the apparently perpendicular path that ignored a zigzag, and the ladders of root and boulder, hemmed in with tangled vegetation, up which we and our starving drooping asses were about to toil. On the 10th September we hardened our hearts, and began to breast the Pass Terrible. My companion was so weak that he required the aid of two or three supporters; I, much less unnerved, managed with one. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock--at their bases green grass and fresh water were standing close to camp, and yet no one had driven the donkeys to feed--and crossing a bushy jungly step, we faced a long steep of loose white soil and rolling stones, up which we could see the Wanyamwezi porters swarming, more like baboons scaling a precipice than human beings, and the asses falling after every few yards. As we moved slowly and painfully forwards, compelled to lie down by cough, thirst, and fatigue, the “sayhah” or war-cry rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of black ants in all directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba, awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of driving the cattle and plundering the villages of Inenge. Two passing parties of men, armed to the teeth, gave us this information; whereupon the negro “Jelai” proposed, fear-maddened--a _sauve qui peut_--leaving to their fate his employers, who, bearing the mark of Abel in this land of Cain, were ever held to be the head and front of all offence. Khudabakhsh, the brave of braves, being attacked by a slight fever, lay down, declaring himself unable to proceed, moaned like a bereaved mother, and cried for drink like a sick girl. The rest of the Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, were in the rear; they had levelled their matchlocks at one of the armed parties as it approached them, and, but for the interference of Kidogo, blood would have been shed.