At sunset, after the Mowa natives had retired, the people of the Expedition—men, women, and children—were mustered. I addressed them seriously. For a long time, I said, both Frank and I had seen it necessary to exercise the strictest economy, and had sacrificed for the general good all our rights and privileges of investing moneys from the general store towards our own comfort, and had simply considered ourselves in the light of stewards of the goods for the public benefit. But it had been obvious to us for some time that the goods were rapidly diminishing during their transit from camp to camp over the rocks and table-land, and we had found it totally impossible to protect the goods from peculation, or to animate the people with our own fears that we should be reduced to starvation long before reaching the sea at the present rate of consumption. Entreaties we had perceived to be of no avail. There were some amongst them, it appeared, who through greed were resolved to cause everybody to suffer; yet if people died through hunger there was not the slightest doubt but that the dying would impute blame to us for having reduced them to such straits. To prevent the calamity which would surely follow absolute poverty, it was our duty to see that some measures should be adopted to punish those who would provoke such frightful suffering. A man had been found that afternoon with a large stock of beads, which he had filched from the general store—that man was Uledi. What ought to be done with him? After much urging, Manwa Sera, the chief, said that it was a very hard case, seeing it was Uledi. Had it been any of the Goee-Goees, men who had for months been tenderly cared for, who had not toiled from morn to eve in the cataracts, nor borne the fatigue and toil of the day; who had never been distinguished for worth, but were always a shiftless and cowardly set, he would have given his vote for drowning him by hanging a great stone to his neck and pitching him into the river; but as it happened to be Uledi, he therefore proposed that he should receive a thorough flogging, to deter others from repeating the crime. The votes of the chiefs were in accord with Manwa Sera’s, and three-fourths of the people cried out for “flogging.” Then I turned to the boat’s crew, and said, “Now, you boys, you who know Uledi so well, and have followed him like children through a hundred rough scenes, speak, what shall be done to him?” Mpwapwa, whose duty was to watch the boat in camp, and who was one of the most reliable and steady men, replied, “Well, master, it is a hard question. Uledi is like our elder brother, and to give our voice for punishing him would be like asking you to punish ourselves. But the fathers of the people have demanded that he shall be beaten, and I am only like a boy among them. Yet, master, for our sakes beat him only just a little. Mpwapwa has said.” [Illustration: PASSING NSÉTO FALLS.]