We left Malatsy early on Thursday, July 30th. The need of our precautions against straggling was soon seen. Within the first quarter of an hour of our march, seven men lagged behind for no solid reason whatever. But we whipped them up and kept them to their duty: and we reached the resting-place within a quarter of an hour of my colleague’s arrival. On two subsequent occasions we picked up a poor fellow suffering from fever, and thoroughly unable to manage his load. His companions readily shared it or carried it in turn; and we were able to bring the invalids safely in. Had we left them, it is certain that they would have travelled for miles in perfect loneliness and at the best would have arrived long after ourselves. It is these unhappy stragglers who alone are exposed to real danger. We had a most pleasant march through the solitudes of this “lone land.” Our course lay up long valleys, over first one pass and then another; or over hard clay ridges, sprinkled with quartz gravel, and then along some clear stream, bordered with fresh, green wood. The valleys were simple and open and very green. The rofia palm grew more abundant: there were varieties of the acacia with their pinnate leaves; with a few specimens of the bamboo palm; and of the _dábo_, a coarse fig tree. The bamboo cane was common, with its tall stalk, from fifteen to twenty feet high, and its soft, white feather at the crown; there was the wild citron also. Everywhere the grass was strong and full of beauty. All the streams too had cut their way down to the rock. The eye could see that the ground was falling rapidly: we were continually descending the slopes of hills: the gullies in the red clay were deep and numerous: nowhere was the ground level, till we reached the rock.