At this period we were all extremely liable to disease, for our system was impoverished. Four of my people suffered from chronic dysentery and eight from large and painful ulcers; the itch disease was rabid—about a dozen of the men were fearful objects of its virulence, though they were not incapacited from duty—and there were two victims of a low fever which no medicine seemed to relieve. In the absence of positive knowledge as to how long we might be toiling in the cataracts, we were all compelled to be extremely economical. Goat and pig meat were such luxuries that we declined to think of them as being possible with our means; tea, coffee, sugar, sardines, were fast receding into the memory-land of past pleasures, and chickens had reached such prices that they were rare in our camp. We possessed one ram from far Uregga, and Mirambo, the black riding-ass—the other two asses had died a few weeks before—but we should have deserved the name of cannibals had we dared to think of sacrificing the pets of the camp. Therefore—by the will of the gods—contentment had to be found in boiled “duff,” or cold cassava bread, ground-nuts, or pea-nuts, yams, and green bananas. To make such strange food palatable was an art that we possessed in a higher degree than our poor comrades. They were supplied with the same materials as we ourselves, but the preparation was different. My dark followers simply dried their cassava, and then pounding it made the meal into porridge. Ground-nuts they threw into the ashes, and when sufficiently baked ate them like hungry men.