6th.--As no further information about the lake could be gained, I bade Mahaya and the Sheikh adieu, leaving as a token of recollection one shukka merikani for the former, one dhoti kiniki for his wife, and a fundo of beads for the poor Arab, and retraced my steps by a double march back to Ukumbi. Whilst passing alongside the archipelago, I shot two geese and a crested crane. What a pity it seemed I could not pluck the fruit almost within my grasp! Had I had but a little more time, and a few loads of beads, I could with ease have crossed the Line, and settled every question which we had come all this distance to ascertain. Indeed, to perform that work, nobody could have started under more advantageous circumstances than were then within my power--all hands being in first-rate condition and health, and all in the right temper for it. But now a new and expensive expedition must be formed, for the capabilities of the country on the eastern flank of the Mountains of the Moon, and along the western shores of the N'yanza, are so notoriously great that it is worthy of serious attention. My reluctance to return may be easier imagined than described. I felt as much tantalised as the unhappy Tantalus must have been when unsuccessful in his bobbings for cherries in the cherry-orchard, and as much grieved as any mother would be at losing her first-born, and resolved and planned forthwith to do everything that lay in my power to visit the lake again. 7th.--We made a march of fourteen miles, passing our second station in Urima by two miles, partly to avoid the chief of that village, a testy, rude, and disagreeable man, who, on the last occasion, inhospitably tried to turn us out of a hut in his village, because we would not submit to his impudent demand of a cloth for the accommodation--a proceeding quite at variance with anything we had met in our former receptions; and we resisted the imposition with a pertinacity equal to his own. Besides this, by coming on the little extra distance, we arrived at the best and cheapest place for purchasing cows and jembies.