It is remarkable how a reliable Headman, without watch, moon, or sun, will wake up and rouse his men at any hour. But if I can avoid doing so I never rely entirely upon anybody. My watch had been rather erratic and was not quite sure at the end of a day whether to be 20 minutes fast or 20 minutes slow. It refrained from registering the happy mean. In order to run no risk of being late next morning, the night at Badiko I put it on an hour, there being, of course, no clock to check by. I had not met a European since leaving Rahama. As might have been expected, it was eventually discovered that before the alteration the watch had been 20 minutes ahead of meridian time, so instead of rising at 4 o’clock as intended, I turned out at 2.30 a.m. and within an hour had finished breakfast. When the fact became clear that I had anticipated the time of assembly, I sat down to an hour-and-a-half of writing by a hurricane lamp. At 4.45, not waiting for Hanza’s whistle, I sounded my own. He, however, was ready; repeated the sound; and we sallied out just as a thin streak of dawn appeared across the eastward sky. As the sun rose we wound round great hills of rock, circular, oblong, pointed, and flat topped, the liquid deposit of past ages now gneissose and hegmatite. Here and there the face had been washed by recent floods to a brightness which in the distance looked like a mirror of running water. At 7.45 a halt was made in the market-place of Magama village for the carriers to have breakfast. Ground-nuts, maize, and milk made up the meal, Hanza having a rather superior course of milk mixed with powdered millet and taken from a calabash by a wooden spoon. When they had finished eating every man washed his mouth and teeth at a stream, and one good-looking young Hausa completed his toilet by placing antimony on his eyelids. Another had utilised a few spare minutes by bringing needle and cotton and mending a garment: scarcely an indication of “the lazy black.” At 8.30 Hanza’s whistle caused the loads to be hoisted and five minutes later the chilling wind gave sign of rain, which presently came in torrents. Mr F. G. Graham, in charge of Lucky Chance Polchi Mine, hearing I was in the neighbouring village and noting signs of the coming downpour, had ridden out and left an invitation with the head of the little column for me to shelter at his house, near by. At the path leading to the haven of hospitality Mr Graham’s servant waited to direct me. But what the carriers, my own servants, and the doki boys had to endure without any protection was quite good enough for me, in oilskin and mounted, so, with a message of thanks to Mr Graham, I went on with the men, who were being drenched.