Shaw was sick, and the whole duty of driving the foundering caravan devolved upon myself.  The Wanyamwezi donkeys stuck in the mire as if they were rooted to it.  As fast as one was flogged from his stubborn position, prone to the depths fell another, giving me a Sisyphean labour, which was maddening trader pelting rain, assisted by such men as Bombay and Uledi, who could not for a whole skin’s sake stomach the storm and mire.  Two hours of such a task enabled me to drag my caravan over a savannah one mile and a half broad; and barely had I finished congratulating myself over my success before I was halted by a deep ditch, which, filled with rain-water from the inundated savannahs, had become a considerable stream, breast-deep, flowing swiftly into the Makata.  Donkeys had to be unloaded, led through a torrent, and loaded again on the other bank—­an operation which consumed a full hour.

Presently, after straggling through a wood clump, barring our progress was another stream, swollen into a river.  The bridge being swept away, we were obliged to swim and float our baggage over, which delayed us two hours more.  Leaving this second river-bank, we splashed, waded, occasionally half-swimming, and reeled through mire, water-dripping grass and matama stalks, along the left bank of the Makata proper, until farther progress was effectually prevented for that day by a deep bend of the river, which we should be obliged to cross the next day.

Though but six miles were traversed during that miserable day, the march occupied ten hours.

Half dead with fatigue, I yet could feel thankful that it was not accompanied by fever, which it seemed a miracle to avoid; for if ever a district was cursed with the ague, the Makata wilderness ranks foremost of those afflicted.  Surely the sight of the dripping woods enveloped in opaque mist, of the inundated country with lengthy swathes of tiger-grass laid low by the turbid flood, of mounds of decaying trees and canes, of the swollen river and the weeping sky, was enough to engender the mukunguru!  The well-used khambi, and the heaps of filth surrounding it, were enough to create a cholera!

The Makata, a river whose breadth during the dry season is but forty feet, in the Masika season assumes the breadth, depth, and force of an important river.  Should it happen to be an unusually rainy season, it inundates the great plain which stretches on either side, and converts it into a great lake.  It is the main feeder of the Wami river, which empties into the sea between the ports of Saadani and Whinde.  About ten miles north-east of the Makata crossing, the Great Makata, the Little Makata, a nameless creek, and the Rudewa river unite; and the river thus formed becomes known as the Wami.  Throughout Usagara the Wami is known as the Mukondokwa.  Three of these streams take their rise from the crescent-like Usagara range, which bounds the Makata plain south and south-westerly; while the Rudewa rises in the northern horn of the same range.