CHAPTER I.

Bad beginning of the new year. Dangerous illness. Kindness of
Arabs. Complete helplessness. Arrive at Tanganyika. The Doctor
is conveyed in canoes. Kasanga Islet. Cochin-China fowls.
Beaches Ujiji. Receives some stores. Plundering hands. Slow
recovery. Writes despatches. Refusal of Arabs to take letters.
Thani bin Suellim. A den of slavers. Puzzling current in Lake
Tanganyika. Letters sent off at last. Contemplates visiting the
Manyuema. Arab depredations. Starts for new explorations in
Manyuema, 12th July, 1869. Voyage on the Lake. Kabogo East.
Crosses Tanganyika. Evil effects of last illness. Elephant
hunter's superstition. Dugumbé. The Lualaba reaches the
Manyuema. Sons of Moenékuss. Sokos first heard of. Manyuema
customs. Illness.


[The new year opened badly enough, and from letters he wrote
subsequently concerning the illness which now attacked him, we gather
that it left evils behind, from which he never quite recovered. The
following entries were made after he regained sufficient strength, but
we see how short they necessarily were, and what labour it was to make
the jottings which relate to his progress towards the western shore of
Lake Tanganyika. He was not able at any time during this seizure to
continue the minute maps of the country in his pocket-books, which for
the first time fail here.]

_1st January, 1869._--I have been wet times without number, but the