o purchase a meal--famines being as bad
where they had been as in Ugogo. To try and get all the men together
again, I now sent off a party loaded with cloths to see what they could
get for us; but they returned on the 30th grinning and joking, with
nothing but a small fragment of goat-flesh, telling lies by the dozens.
Johur then came into camp, unconscious that Baraka by my orders had,
during his absence, been inspecting his kit, where he found concealed
seventy-three yards of cloth, which could only have been my property, as
Johur had brought no akaba or reserve fund from the coast.

The theft having been proved to the satisfaction of every one, I ordered
Baraka to strip him of everything and give him three dozen lashes; but
after twenty-one had been given, the rest were remitted on his promising
to turn Queen's evidence, when it transpired that Mutwana had done as
much as himself. Johur, it turned out, was a murderer, having obtained
his freedom by killing his master. He was otherwise a notoriously bad
character; so, wishing to make an example, as I knew all my men were
robbing me daily, though I could not detect them, I had him turned out
of camp. Baraka was a splendid detective, and could do everything well
when he wished it, so I sent him off now with cloths to see what he
could to at Jiwa la Mkoa, and next day he returned triumphantly driving
in cows and goats. Three Wanyamuezi, also, who heard we were given to
shooting wild animals continually, came with him to offer their services
as porters.

As nearly all the men had now returned, Grant and I spent New Year's Day
with the first detachment at Jiwa la Mkoa, or Round Rock--a single tembe
village occupied by a few Wakimbu settlers, who, by their presence and
domestic habits, made us feel as though we were well out of the wood. So
indeed we found it; for although this wilderness was formerly an
entire forest of trees and wild animals, numerous Wakimbu, who formerly
occupied the banks of the Ruaha to the southward, had been driven
to migrate here, wherever they could find springs of water, by the
boisterous naked pastorals the Warori.

At night three slaves belonging to Sheikh Salem bin Saif stole into our
camp, and said they had been sent by their master to seek for porters at
Kaze, as all the Wanyamuezi porters of four large caravans had deserted
in Ugogo, and they could not move. I was rather pleased by this news,
and thought it served the merchants right, kno