After travelling through the corn-fields of Pembera Pereh we emerged upon a broad flat plain, as level as the still surface of a pond, whence the salt of the Wagogo is obtained.  From Kanyenyi on the southern road, to beyond the confines of Uhumba and Ubanarama, this saline field extends, containing many large ponds of salt bitter water whose low banks are covered with an effervescence partaking of the nature of nitrate.  Subsequently, two days afterwards, having ascended the elevated ridge which separates Ugogo from Uyanzi, I obtained a view of this immense saline plain, embracing over a hundred square miles.  I may have been deceived, but I imagined I saw large expanses of greyish-blue water, which causes me to believe that this salina is but a corner of a great salt lake.  The Wahumba, who are numerous, from Nyambwa to the Uyanzi border, informed my soldiers that there was a “Maji Kuba” away to the north.

Mizanza, our next camp after Nyambwa, is situated in a grove of palms, about thirteen miles from the latter place.  Soon after arriving I had to bury myself under blankets, plagued with the same intermittent fever which first attacked me during the transit of Marenga Mkali.  Feeling certain that one day’s halt, which would enable me to take regular doses of the invaluable sulphate of quinine, would cure me, I requested Sheikh Thani to tell Hamed to halt on the morrow, as I should be utterly unable to continue thus long, under repeated attacks of a virulent disease which was fast reducing me into a mere frame of skin and bone.  Hamed, in a hurry to arrive at Unyanyembe in order to dispose of his cloth before other caravans appeared in the market, replied at first that he would not, that he could not, stop for the Musungu.  Upon Thani’s reporting his answer to me, I requested him to inform Hamed that, as the Musungu did not wish to detain him, or any other caravan, it was his express wish that Hamed would march and leave him, as he was quite strong enough in guns to march through Ugogo alone.  Whatever cause modified the Sheikh’s resolution and his anxiety to depart, Hamed’s horn signal for the march was not heard that night, and on the morrow he had not gone.

Early in the morning I commenced on my quinine doses; at 6 A.M.  I took a second dose; before noon I had taken four more—­ altogether, fifty measured grains-the effect of which was manifest in the copious perspiration which drenched flannels, linen, and blankets.  After noon I arose, devoutly thankful that the disease which had clung to me for the last fourteen days had at last succumbed to quinine.