That down-pour of rain which visited us the day we crossed the Makata proved the last of the Masika season.  As the first rainfall which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days.  The seers of Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same Masika with solemnity.  “For forty days,” said they, “rain would fall incessantly;” whereas we had but experienced eighteen days’ rain.  Nevertheless, we were glad that it was over, for we were tired of stopping day after day to dry the bales and grease the tools and ironware, and of seeing all things of cloth and leather rot visibly before our eyes.

The 1st of May found us struggling through the mire and water of the Makata with a caravan bodily sick, from the exertion and fatigue of crossing so many rivers and wading through marshes.  Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma, “little irons,” had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a youth of lusty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and adventurer—­the weakliest of mortal bodies—­was ever ailing for lack of “force,” as he expressed it in French, i.e. “strength,” ever indisposed to work, shiftless, mock-sick, but ever hungry.  “Oh!  God,” was the cry of my tired soul, “were all the men of my Expedition like this man I should be compelled to return.  Solomon was. wise perhaps from inspiration, perhaps from observation; I was becoming wise by experience, and I was compelled to observe that when mud and wet sapped the physical energy of the lazily-inclined, a dog-whip became their backs, restoring them to a sound—­some-times to an extravagant activity.

For thirty miles from our camp was the Makata plain an extensive swamp.  The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep.  Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march.  This kind of work continued for two days, until we came in sight of the Rudewa river, another powerful stream with banks brimful of rushing rain-water.  Crossing a branch of the Rudewa, and emerging from the dank reedy grass crowding the western bank, the view consisted of an immense sheet of water topped by clumps of grass tufts and foliage of thinly scattered trees, bounded ten or twelve miles off by the eastern front of the Usagara mountain range.  The acme of discomfort and vexation was realized on the five-mile march from the Rudewa branch.  As myself and the Wangwana appeared with the loaded donkeys, the pagazis were observed huddled on a mound.