On the 22nd December my companion rejoined me, bringing four loads of cloth, three of beads, and seven of brass wire: they formed part of the burden of the twenty-two porters who were to join the Expedition ten days after its departure from the coast. The Hindus, Ladha Damha and Mr. Rush Ramji, after the decease of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, had behaved with culpable neglect. The cloth was of the worst and flimsiest description; the beads were the cheap white and the useless black--the latter I was obliged to throw away; and as they sent up the supply without other guard than two armed slaves, “Mshindo” and “Kirikhota,” the consequence was that the pair had plundered _ad libitum_. No letters had been forwarded, and no attention had been paid to my repeated requests for drugs and other stores. My companion’s new gang, levied at Kazeh, affected the greatest impatience. They refused to halt for a day,--even Christmas day. They proposed double marches, and they resolved to proceed by the straight road to Msene. It was deemed best to humour them. They arrived, however, at their destination only one day before my party, who travelled leisurely, and who followed the longer and the more cultivated route. We left Irora on the 23rd December, and marched from sunrise till noon to the district of Eastern Wilyankuru. There we again separated. On the next day I passed alone through the settlement called Muinyi Chandi, where certain Arabs from Oman had built large Tembe, to serve as barracoons and warehouses. This district supplies the adjoining countries with turmeric, of which very little grows in Unyanyembe. After this march disappeared the last of the six hammals who had been hired to carry the hammocks. They were as unmanageable as wild asses, ever grumbling and begging for “kitoweyo,”--“kitchen;”--constitutionally unfitted to obey an order; disposed, as the noble savage generally is, to be insolent; and, like all porters in this part of the world, unable to carry a palanquin. Two men, instead of four, insisted upon bearing the hammock; thus overburdened and wishing to get over the work, they hurried themselves till out of breath. When one was fagged, the man that should have relieved him was rarely to be found, consequently two or three stiff trudges knocked them up and made them desert. Said bin Salim, the Jemadar, and the Baloch, doubtlessly impressed with the belief that my days were numbered, passed me on the last march without a word--the sun was hot, and they were hastening to shade--and left me with only two men to carry the hammock, in a dangerous strip of jungle where, shortly afterwards, Salim bin Masud, an Arab merchant of Msene, was murdered.