However, I still determined to leave on the appointed day of the following Wednesday, though I had to walk. Annoyance at the continual delays was felt to be more risk to health than trekking in the tropics on foot over a bad path. But a difficulty much harder to remove than absence of horses presented itself. The great, national festival of the Salah—the Hausa Christmas, as it is termed locally—was approaching and carriers would not move from their homes and miss the two days’ jollification. No reasonable remuneration would entice them. Though I were prepared to go without the necessary couple of horses, the indispensable carriers would not be forthcoming. There was, therefore, absolutely no alternative to possessing my soul in patience as best I might until the human and equine elements shaped into propitious form. The Salah over, the Pagan pony having been disposed of—thereby hangs another story, which cannot be told now—having been promised hire of a second horse, and the carriers been engaged, I am leaving to-morrow morning southwards. CHAPTER XXVI INCIDENTS ON TREK The changed seasons—End of the rainy season—Bush fires—Rolling downs and kopjes—A 25-miles march without food or drink—Return journey commenced—Ascent of the escarpment, 2,200 feet—A Hausa and Pagan affray—An ugly situation. Leaving Naraguta and making direct south, about four miles along an excellent broad road, Jos is reached, past which one takes either a branch, still wide, road or a path which can scarcely be termed a bush one, for the character of the country is changing. There are granite boulders of moderate size. The merely undulating plains with small hills correspond to the impressions one has gained from the descriptions of Transvaal scenery, with its expansive veldt and kopjes around. Travelling is no longer amidst torrential downpour and flooding tornadoes. The rains have ceased. No more will fall for at least three months, probably four. The rains ended with the advent of the October new moon. They stopped almost as automatically as the municipal turncock checks the supply from the main to the household pipes in English towns. A storm came and, continuing during the evening preceding the new moon, a bet was made at 8 o’clock that the fall of water would last over the astronomical change, which was to occur between 1 and 3 a.m. The man who backed the affirmative lost. The shower ceased at 11 p.m. The roads just here are new, smooth and hard. Bridges of earth and wood, easily swept away by the swollen, rushing streams of the wet season, have been rebuilt, and therefore there is no wading across rivers of doubtful depth with deep holes in the bed or large rocks under water.