We discovered cloth to be so abundant amongst the Babwendé that it was against our conscience to purchase even a fowl, for naturally the nearer we approached civilization cloth became cheaper in value, until finally a fowl cost four yards of our thick sheeting! Frank and I therefore lived upon the same provisions as our people. Our store of sugar had run out in Uregga, our coffee was finished at Vinya Njara, and at Inkisi Falls our tea, alas! alas! came to an end. To guard against contingencies—for I thought it possible that, however desperately we strove to proceed towards the Western Ocean, we might have been compelled to return to Nyangwé—I had left at Nyangwé, in charge of Abed bin Salem, three tins of tea and a few other small things. At this juncture, how we wished for them! Yet we could have well parted with a large stock of tea, coffee, and sugar in order to obtain a pair of shoes apiece. Though I had kept one pair of worn-out shoes by me, my last new pair had been put on in the jungles of doleful Uregga, and now six weeks’ rough wear over the gritty iron and clink-stone, trap, and granite blocks along the river had ground through soles and uppers, until I began to feel anxious. As for Frank, he had been wearing sandals made out of my leather portmanteaus, and slippers out of our gutta-percha pontoon; but climbing over the rocks and rugged steeps wore them to tatters in such quick succession, that it was with the utmost difficulty that I was enabled, by appealing to the pride of the white man, to induce him to persevere in the manufacture of sandals for his own use. Frequently, on suddenly arriving in camp from my wearying labours, I would discover him with naked feet, and would reprove him for shamelessly exposing his white feet to the vulgar gaze of the aborigines! In Europe this would not be considered indelicate, but in barbarous Africa the feet should be covered as much as the body; for there is a small modicum of superiority shown even in clothing the feet. Not only on moral grounds did I urge him to cover his feet, but also for his own comfort and health; for the great cataract gorge and table-land above it, besides abounding in ants, mosquitoes, and vermin, are infested with three dangerous insects, which prey upon the lower limbs of man—the “jigga” from Brazil, the guinea-worm, and an entozoon, which, depositing its eggs in the muscles, produces a number of short, fat worms and severe tumours. I also discovered, from the examples in my camp, that the least abrasion of the skin was likely, if not covered, to result in an ulcer. My own person testified to this, for an injury to the thumb of my left hand, injured by a fall on the rocks at Gamfwé’s, had culminated in a painful wound, which I daily cauterized; but though bathed, burned, plastered, and bandaged twice a day, I had been at this time a sufferer for over a month.