cool their noble bile with a long pole. At length it became necessary to make Kidogo raise his veto against the advance of the caravan. He did not appear before me till summoned half-a-dozen times: when he at last vouchsafed so to do I dragged rather than led him to the mat, where sat in surly pride Said bin Salim, with the monocular Jemadar, and I ordered the trio to quench with the waters of explanation the fire of anger. After an apparently satisfactory arrangement Kidogo started up and disappeared in the huts of his men; it presently proved that he had so done for the purpose of proposing to his party, who were now the sole interpreters, that to Said bin Salim, an ignoramus in such matters, should be committed the weighty task of settling the amount of our blackmail and presents with the greedy chiefs of Ugogo. Had the mischievous project been carried into execution, we should have been sufferers to some extent: lack of unanimity however caused the measure to be thrown out. A march was fixed for the next day, when the bullock, on this occasion the scape-grace, broke its tether and plunged into the bush: it was followed by the Baloch and the porters, whose puny arrows, when they alighted upon the beast’s stern, only goaded it forwards, and at least threescore matchlock balls were discharged before one bullet found its billet in the fugitive. The camp of course then demanded another holiday to eat beef. The reader must not imagine that I am making a “great cry,” about a little matter. Four days are not easily spent when snowed-up in a country inn, and that is a feeble comparison for the halt in East Africa, where outfit is leaking away, the valuable travelling-time is perhaps drawing to a close, health is palpably failing, and nothing but black faces made blacker still by ill-humour and loud squabbles, meet the eye and ear. Insignificant things they afterwards appear viewed through the medium of memory, these petty annoyances of travel; yet at the moment they are severely felt, and they must be resented accordingly. The African traveller’s fitness for the task of exploration depends more upon his faculty of chafing under delays and kicking against the pricks, than upon his power of displaying the patience of a Griselda or a Job.