2nd June, 1866.—­The men sent to the Matambwe south-east of this returned with a good supply of grain.  The sepoys won’t come; they say they cannot,—­a mere excuse, v because they tried to prevail on the Nassick boys to go slowly like them, and wear my patience out.  They killed one camel with the butt ends of their muskets, beating it till it died.  I thought of going down disarming them all, and taking five or six of the willing ones, but it is more trouble than profit, so I propose to start westwards on Monday the 4th, or Tuesday the 5th.  My sepoys offered Ali eight rupees to take them to the coast, thus it has been a regularly organized conspiracy.

From the appearance of the cow-buffalo, I fear the tsetse is its chief enemy, but there is a place like a bayonet wound on its shoulder, and many of the wounds or bruises on the camels were so probed that I suspect the sepoys.

Many things African are possessed of as great vitality in their line as the African people.  The white ant was imported accidentally into St. Helena from the coast of Guinea, and has committed such ravages in the town of St. James, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against them.  In other so-called new countries a wave of English weeds follows the tide of English emigration, and so with insects; the European house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly in New Zealand.  Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse?  The Arabs have given the Makonde bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, but with a sharp proboscis; and several enormous gad-flies.  Here there is so much room for everything.  In New Zealand the Norwegian rat is driven off by even the European mouse; not to mention the Hanoverian rat of Waterton, which is lord of the land.  The Maori say that “as the white man’s rat has driven away the native rat, so the European fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our fern, so will the Maori disappear before the white man himself.”  The hog placed ashore by Captain Cook has now overrun one side of the island, and is such a nuisance that a large farmer of 100,000 acres has given sixpence per head for the destruction of some 20,000, and without any sensible diminution; this would be no benefit here, for the wild hogs abound and do much damage, besides affording food for the tsetse:  the brutes follow the ewes with young, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their appearance.

3rd June, 1866.—­The cow-buffalo fell down foaming at the mouth, and expired.  The meat looks fat and nice, and is relished by the people, a little glariness seemed to be present on the foreleg, and I sometimes think that, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of the symptoms observed in the camels and buffaloes now, and those we saw in oxen and horses, the evil may be the tsetse, after all, but they have been badly used, without a doubt.  The calf has a cut half an inch deep, the camels have had large ulcers, and at last a peculiar smell, which portends death.  I feel perplexed, and not at all certain as to the real causes of death.