Having at length found the way, we advanced over a broad, open, and grassy plain, striped with southwards-trending sandy water-courses of easy ascent and descent, and lined with a green aromatic vegetation, in which the tall palm suggested a resemblance to the valley-plains of the Usagara Mountains. As night fell upon us like a pall, we entered the broken red ground that limits the flat westwards, and, ascending a dark ridge of broken, stony, ground, and a dense thorn-bush, we found ourselves upon a higher level. The asses stumbled, the men grumbled, and the want of water severely tried the general temper. From this cold jungle--the thermometer showed a minimum of 54° F.--we emerged at dawn on the 11th October, and after three hours’ driving through a dense bush of various thorns, with calabashes reddened by the intense heat, and tripping upon the narrow broken path that ran over rolling ground, we found the porters halted at some pits full of sweet clear water. Here the caravan preserved a remarkable dead silence. I inquired the cause. The Coast-Arabs who accompanied us were trying an experiment, which, had it failed, would have caused trouble, expense, and waste of time; they were attempting to pass without blackmail the little clearing of Usek’he, which lay to the south of the desert-road, and they knew that its Sultan, Ganza Mikono, usually posted a party upon the low masses of bristling hill hard by, to prevent caravans evading his dues. As no provisions were procurable in the jungle, it was judged better to proceed, and the sun was in the zenith before we reached the district of K’hok’ho. We halted under a spreading tree, near the head-quarter village of its villanous Sultan, in an open plain of millet and panicum-stubbles. Presently Kidogo, disliking the appearance of things--the men, rushing with yells of excitement from their villages, were forming a dense ring around us; the even more unmanageable old women stared like _sages femmes_, and already a Mnyamwezi porter had been beaten at the well--stirred us up and led the way to an open jungle about a mile distant. There we were safe; no assailant would place himself upon the plain, the Coast-Arabs were close at hand, and in the bush we should have been more than a match for the Wagogo.