the more that I found it necessary to censure the timidity of
this otherwise worthy little man. Baraka thought, in his
conceit, that he could have done all things better, and gained
signal fame, had he been created chief. Perhaps he thought he
had gained the first step towards this exalted rank, and hence
his appearing very happy for this time. I could not see through
so deep a scheme and only hoped that he would shortly forget, in
the changes of the marching life, those beautiful wives he had
left behind him, which Bombay in his generosity tried to persuade
me was the cause of his mental distraction.

Our halt at the ford here was cut short by the increasing
sickness of the Hottentots, and the painful fact that Captain
Grant was seized with fever.[FN#6] We had to change camp to the
little village of Kiruru, where, as rice was grown--an article
not to be procured again on this side of Unyamuezi--we stopped a
day to lay in supplies of this most valuable of all travelling
food. Here I obtained the most consistent accounts of the river
system which, within five days' journey, trends through Uzegura;
and I concluded, from what I heard, that there is no doubt of the
Mukondokua and Wami rivers being one and the same stream. My
informants were the natives of the settlement, and they all
concurred in saying that the Kingani above the junction is called
the Rufu, meaning the parent stream. Beyond it, following under
the line of the hills, at one day's journey distant, there is a
smaller river called Msonge. At an equal distance beyond it,
another of the same size is known as Lungerengeri; and a fourth
river is the Wami, which mouths in the sea at Utondue, between
the ports of Whindi and Saadami. In former years, the ivory-
merchants, ever seeking for an easy road for their trade, and