Three miles of the same country, with tall bean-plants about, castor oil, and maize, but no villages in sight. Bananas unusually fine, and Borassus everywhere. At the tenth or eleventh mile we reached the fringe of hills bordering the higher lands, and, taking advantage of a passage about half a mile wide which has been cut by the river, penetrated the first barrier--a low rounded hill of conglomerate, fine in texture, and of a dark-red-color. Flanking this for two miles, we entered a broad oval expansion among the hills, the site apparently of a former lake. Winding along with the river for a mile or two more, and passing through a narrow and romantic glen, we emerged in a second valley, and camped for the night on the banks of the stream. On the opposite side stood a few native huts, and the occupants, after much reconnoitring, were induced to exchange some _ufa_ and sweet potatoes for a little cloth. _1st October_.--Moolu peered into my tent with the streak of dawn to announce a catastrophe. Four of the men had run away during the night. All was going so well yesterday that I flattered myself I was to be spared this traditional experience--the most exasperating of all the traveller's woes, for the whole march must be delayed until fresh recruits are enlisted to carry the deserters' loads. The delinquents were all Bandawé men. They had no complaint. They stole nothing. It was a simple case of want of pluck. They were going into a strange land. The rainy season was coming on. Their loads were full-weight. So they got homesick and ran. I had three more Bandawé men in the caravan, and, knowing well that the moment they heard the news they would go and do likewise, I ordered them to be told what had happened and then sent to my tent. In a few moments they appeared; but what to say to them? Their dialect was quite strange to me, and yet I felt I must impress them somehow. Like the judge putting on the black cap, I drew my revolver from under my pillow, and, laying it before me, proceeded to address them. Beginning with a few general remarks on the weather, I first briefly sketched the geology of Africa, and then broke into an impassioned defence of the British Constitution. The three miserable sinners--they had done nothing in the world--quaked like aspens. I then followed up my advantage by intoning in a voice of awful solemnity, the enunciation of the Forty-Seventh Proposition of Euclid, and then threw my all into a blood-curdling _Quod erat demonstrandum_. Scene two followed when I was alone; I turned on my pillow and wept for shame. It was a prodigious piece of rascality, but I cannot imagine anything else that would have done, and it succeeded perfectly. These men were to the end the most faithful I had. They felt thenceforth they owed me their lives; for, according to African custom, the sins of their fellow-tribesmen should have been visited upon them with the penalty of death.