While we were striding onward, at the rate of nearly three miles an hour, the caravan I perceived sheered off from the road, resuming it about fifty yards ahead of something on the road, to which the attention of the men was directed.  On coming up, I found the object to be the dead body of a man, who had fallen a victim to that fearful scourge of Africa, the small-pox.  He was one of Oseto’s gang of marauders, or guerillas, in the service of Mkasiwa of Unyanyembe, who were hunting these forests for the guerillas of Mirambo.  They had been returning from Ukonongo from a raid they had instituted against the Sultan of Mbogo, and they had left their comrade to perish in the road.  He had apparently been only one day dead.

Apropos of this, it was a frequent thing with us to discover a skeleton or a skull on the roadside.  Almost every day we saw one, sometimes two, of these relics of dead, and forgotten humanity.

Shortly after this we emerged from the forest, and entered a mbuga, or plain, in which we saw a couple of giraffes, whose long necks were seen towering above a bush they had been nibbling at.  This sight was greeted with a shout; for we now knew we had entered the game country, and that near the Gombe creek, or river, where we intended to halt, we should see plenty of these animals.

A walk of three hours over this hot plain brought us to the cultivated fields of Manyara.  Arriving before the village-gate, we were forbidden to enter, as the country was throughout in a state of war, and it behoved them to be very careful of admitting any party, lest the villagers might be compromised.  We were, however, directed to a khambi to the right of the village, near some pools of clear water, where we discovered some half dozen ruined huts, which looked very uncomfortable to tired people.

After we had built our camp, the kirangozi was furnished with some cloths to purchase food from the village for the transit of a wilderness in front of us, which was said to extend nine marches, or 135 miles.  He was informed that the Mtemi had strictly prohibited his people from selling any grain whatever.

This evidently was a case wherein the exercise of a little diplomacy could only be effective; because it would detain us several days here, if we were compelled to send men back to Kikuru for provisions.  Opening a bale of choice goods, I selected two royal cloths, and told Bombay to carry them to him, with the compliments and friendship of the white man.  The Sultan sulkily refused them, and bade him return to the white man and tell him not to bother him.  Entreaties were of no avail, he would not relent; and the men, in exceedingly bad temper, and hungry, were obliged to go to bed supperless.  The words of Njara, a slave-trader, and parasite of the great Sheikh bin Nasib, recurred to me.  “Ah, master, master, you will find the people will be too much for you, and that you will have to return.  The Wa-manyara are bad, the Wakonongo are very bad, the Wazavira are the worst of all.  You have come to this country at a bad time.  It is war everywhere.”  And, indeed, judging from the tenor of the conversations around our camp-fires, it seemed but too evident.  There was every prospect of a general decamp of all my people.  However, I told them not to be discouraged; that I would get food for them in the morning.