We were delayed ten days off Wale Point by various preliminaries to departure. Said bin Salim, a half-caste Arab of Zanzibar, who, sorely against his will, was ordered by the prince to act as Ras Kafilah, or caravan-guide, had, after ceaseless and fruitless prayers for delay, preceded us about a fortnight, for the purpose of collecting porters. The timid little man, whose nerves were shaken to weeping-point by the terrors of the way, and by the fancy that, thus cooperating with the exploration, he was incurring the hatred of his fellows, had “taken the shilling,” in the shape of 500 dollars, advanced from public funds by the consul, with a promise of an ample reward in hard coin, and a gold watch, “si se bene gesserit:” at the same time Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton had warned me against trusting to a half-caste. Accompanied by a Cutch Banyan of the Bhattia caste, by name Ramji--of whom more anon--he had crossed over, on the 1st of June, to the main-land, and had hired a gang of porters, who, however, hearing that their employer was a Muzungu, a “white man,” at once dispersed, forgetting to return their hire. About one hundred and seventy men were required; only thirty-six were procurable. The large amount of carriage was necessitated by the bulky and ponderous nature of African specie, cotton cloth, brass-wire, and beads, of which a total of seventy loads was expended in one year and nine months. Moreover, under the impression that “vert and venison” abounded in the interior, I had provided ammunition for two years,--ten thousand copper-caps of sizes, forty boxes, each restricted, for convenience of porterage, to forty pounds, and containing ball, grape, and shot, six fire-proof magazines, and two small barrels of fine powder, weighing in total fifty pounds, together with four ten-pound kegs of a coarser kind for the escort,--in all, two hundred rounds for each individual of the party. This supply was deemed necessary on account of the immense loss to which ammunition is subjected by theft and weather in these lands.