I left ambulance quarters, and Dakawa, on the 28th of August, and reached Morogoro in the forenoon two days later, there to find that the battalion was still fifteen miles ahead. So, not to be done, I borrowed a mule and a broken-down German saddle, and caught up the column before night-fall, at Killundi, east of Morogoro on the low road south of the Central Railway. Over the country I had passed in coming from Dakawa great stretches of the bush grass had been burnt down by the enemy in their retirement, presumably so that there would not be even dry poor grazing for our already lean-flanked horses and cattle. So we had reached Morogoro—which was a large, picturesque town below the northern foothills of the Ulugúru Mountains, with colonial well-built houses and bungalows, and palm-shaded, sand-carpeted streets, wherein moved native pedestrians in bright-coloured cotton garments swathed loosely over their shoulders and bodies. And here I must halt; though the columns halted not, and relentlessly continued their pursuit of the fleeing enemy. To reach Morogoro we had trekked some 355 miles, and in attaining our objective had taken part in the fall of the entire Central Railway; for in conjunction with our operation, and almost simultaneously, naval forces captured the port of Bagomayo, near Dar-es-Salaam; General Van Deventer’s column cut the railway at Kilossa and Mpapua—over 100 miles west of Morogoro—while the Belgian forces, from the Congo, threatened and eventually captured Tabora—the interior terminal of the railway. A few days later news came through that Dar-es-Salaam, the capital and chief port of the Protectorate, had surrendered to naval forces on the 4th of September. After wrecking all the important steel-constructed bridges, and all the rolling stock on the railway, the enemy had now fled to the south into the only country that remained free to them—even though it was, beyond the Ulugúru Mountains, a country of bush and swamp and wilderness to which they fled, and entailed their final irrevocable departure from the last of their civilised settlements and trade-centres, and from their all-important railway. Indeed, at this stage, it must have been patent to most of them that, in suffering this disaster, their country was lost; prolong the final capitulation though they may. [Illustration: MOROGORO—RUFIJI RIVER] CHAPTER VI THE THIRD STAGE