When asked if the mound was the camp, they replied “No.”  “Why, then, do you stop here?”—­Ugh! water plenty!!” “One drew a line across his loins to indicate the depth of water before us, another drew a line across his chest, another across his throat another held his hand over his head, by which he meant that we should have to swim.  Swim five miles through a reedy marsh!  It was impossible; it was also impossible that such varied accounts could all be correct.  Without hesitation, therefore, I ordered the Wangwana to proceed with the animals.  After three hours of splashing through four feet of water we reached dry land, and had traversed the swamp of Makata.  But not without the swamp with its horrors having left a durable impression upon our minds; no one was disposed to forget its fatigues, nor the nausea of travel which it almost engendered.  Subsequently, we had to remember its passage still more vividly, and to regret that we had undertaken the journey during the Masika season, when the animals died from this date by twos and threes, almost every day, until but five sickly worn-out beasts remained; when the Wangwana, soldiers, and pagazis sickened of diseases innumerable; when I myself was finally compelled to lie a-bed with an attack of acute dysentery which brought me to the verge of the grave.  I suffered more, perhaps, than I might have done had I taken the proper medicine, but my over-confidence in that compound, called “Collis Brown’s Chlorodyne,” delayed the cure which ultimately resulted from a judicious use of Dover’s powder.  In no one single case of diarrhoea or acute dysentery had this “Chlorodyne,” about which so much has been said, and written, any effect of lessening the attack whatever, though I used three bottles.  To the dysentery contracted during, the transit of the Makata swamp, only two fell victims, and those were a pagazi and my poor little dog “Omar,” my companion from India.

The only tree of any prominence in the Makata valley was the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis), and this grew in some places in numbers sufficient to be called a grove; the fruit was not ripe while we passed, otherwise we might have enjoyed it as a novelty.  The other vegetation consisted of the several species of thorn bush, and the graceful parachute-topped and ever-green mimosa.

The 4th of May we were ascending a gentle slope towards the important village of Rehenneko, the first village near to which we encamped in Usagara.  It lay at the foot of the mountain, and its plenitude and mountain air promised us comfort and health.  It was a square, compact village, surrounded by a thick wall of mud, enclosing cone-topped huts, roofed with bamboo and holcus-stalks; and contained a population of about a thousand souls.  It has several wealthy and populous neighbours, whose inhabitants are independent enough in their manner, but not unpleasantly so.  The streams are of the purest water, fresh, and pellucid as crystal, bubbling over round pebbles and clean gravel, with a music delightful to hear to the traveller in search of such a sweetly potable element.