From Tura to the Kwala Mtoni is seventeen and a half miles, a distance which, however easy it may be traversed once a fortnight, assumes a prodigious length when one has to travel it almost every other day, at least, so my pagazis, soldiers, and followers found it, and their murmurs were very loud when I ordered the signal to be sounded on the march.  Abdul Kader, the tailor who had attached himself to me, as a man ready-handed at all things, from mending a pair of pants, making a delicate entremets, or shooting an elephant, but whom the interior proved to be the weakliest of the weakly, unfit for anything except eating and drinking—–­almost succumbed on this march.

Long ago the little stock of goods which Abdul had brought from Zanzibar folded in a pocket-handkerchief, and with which he was about to buy ivory and slaves, and make his fortune in the famed land of Unyamwezi, had disappeared with the great eminent hopes he had built on them, like those of Alnaschar the unfortunate owner of crockery in the Arabian tale.  He came to me as we prepared for the march, with a most dolorous tale about his approaching death, which he felt in his bones, and weary back:  his legs would barely hold him up; in short, he had utterly collapsed—­would I take mercy on him, and let him depart?  The cause of this extraordinary request, so unlike the spirit with which he had left Zanzibar, eager to possess the ivory and slaves of Unyamwezi, was that on the last long march, two of my donkeys being dead, I had ordered that the two saddles which they had carried should be Abdul Kader’s load to Unyanyembe.  The weight of the saddles was 16 lbs., as the spring balance-scale indicated, yet Abdul Kader became weary of life, as, he counted the long marches that intervened between the mtoni and Unyanyembe.  On the ground he fell prone, to kiss my feet, begging me in the name of God to permit him to depart.

As I had had some experience of Hindoos, Malabarese, and coolies in Abyssinia, I knew exactly how to deal with a case like this.  Unhesitatingly I granted the request as soon as asked, for as much tired as Abdul Kader said he was of life, I was with Abdul Kader’s worthlessness.  But the Hindi did not want to be left in the jungle, he said, but, after arriving in Unyanyembe.  “Oh,” said I, “then you must reach Unyanyembe first; in the meanwhile you will carry those saddles there for the food which you must eat.”

As the march to Rubuga was eighteen and three-quarter miles, the pagazis walked fast and long without resting.

Rubuga, in the days of Burton, according to his book, was a prosperous district.  Even when we passed, the evidences of wealth and prosperity which it possessed formerly, were plain enough in the wide extent of its grain fields, which stretched to the right and left of the Unyanyembe road for many a mile.  But they were only evidences of what once were numerous villages, a well-cultivated and populous district,