A little further on we came across a large khambi, occupied by Sultan bin Mohammed, an Omani Arab of high descent, who, as soon as he was notified of my approach, came out to welcome me, and invite me to his khambi.  As his harem lodged in his tent, of course I was not invited thither; but a carpet outside was ready for his visitor.  After the usual questions had been asked about my health, the news of the road, the latest from Zanzibar and Oman, he asked me if I had much cloth with me.  This was a question often asked by owners of down caravans, and the reason of it is that the Arabs, in their anxiety to make as much as possible of their cloth at the ivory ports on the Tanganika and elsewhere, are liable to forget that they should retain a portion for the down marches.  As, indeed, I had but a bale left of the quantity of cloth retained for provisioning my party on the road, when outfitting my caravans on the coast, I could unblushingly reply in the negative.

I halted a day at Kusuri to give my caravan a rest, after its long series of marches, before venturing on the two days’ march through the uninhabited wilderness that separates the district of Jiweh la Singa Uyanzi from the district of Tura in Unyanyembe.  Hamed preceded, promising to give Sayd bin Salim notice of my coming, and to request him to provide a tembe for me.

On the 15th, having ascertained that Sheikh Thani would be detained several days at Kusuri, owing to the excessive number of his people who were laid up with that dreadful plague of East Africa, the small-pox, I bade him farewell, and my caravan struck out of Kusuri once more for the wilderness and the jungle.  A little before noon we halted at the Khambi of Mgongo Tembo, or the Elephant’s Back—­so called from a wave of rock whose back, stained into dark brownness by atmospheric influences, is supposed by the natives to resemble the blue-brown back of this monster of the forest.  My caravan had quite an argument with me here, as to whether we should make the terekeza on this day or on the next.  The majority was of the opinion that the next day would be the best for a terekeza; but I, being the “bana,” consulting my own interests, insisted, not without a flourish or two of my whip, that the terekeza should be made on this day.

Mgongo Tembo, when Burton and Speke passed by, was a promising settlement, cultivating many a fair acre of ground.  But two years ago war broke out, for some bold act of its people upon caravans, and the Arabs came from Unyanyembe with their Wangwana servants, attacked them, burnt the villages, and laid waste the work of years.  Since that time Mgongo Tembo has been but blackened wrecks of houses, and the fields a sprouting jungle.

A cluster of date palm-trees, overtopping a dense grove close to the mtoni of Mgongo Tembo, revived my recollections of Egypt.  The banks of the stream, with their verdant foliage, presented a strange contrast to the brown and dry appearance of the jungle which lay on either side.