back of the head.

_5th, 6th, and 7th January, 1870._--Wettings by rain and grass
overhanging our paths, with bad water, brought on choleraic symptoms;
and opium from Mohamad had no effect in stopping it: he, too, had
rheumatism. On suspecting the water as the cause, I had all I used
boiled, and this was effectual, but I was greatly reduced in flesh, and
so were many of our party.

We proceeded nearly due north, through wilderness and many villages and
running rills; the paths are often left to be choked up by the
overbearing vegetation, and then the course of the rill is adopted as
the only clear passage; it has also this advantage, it prevents
footmarks being followed by enemies: in fact the object is always to
make approaches to human dwellings as difficult as possible, even the
hedges around villages sprout out and grow a living fence, and this is
covered by a great mass of a species of calabash with its broad leaves,
so that nothing appears of the fence outside.

_11th January, 1870._--The people are civil, but uproarious from the
excitement of having never seen strangers before; all visitors from a
distance came with their large wooden shields; many of the men are
handsome and tall but the women are plainer than at Bambarre.

_12th January, 1870._--Cross the Lolinde, 35 yards and knee deep,
flowing to join Luamo far down: dark water. (_13th._) Through the hills
Chimunemune; we see many albinos and partial lepers and syphilis is
prevalent. It is too trying to travel during the rains.

_14th January, 1870._--The Muabe palm had taken possession of a broad
valley, and the leaf-stalks, as thick as a strong man's arm and 20 feet
long, had fallen off and blocked up all passage except by one path made
and mixed up by the feet of buffaloes and elephants. In places like this
the leg goes into elephants' holes up to the thigh and it is grievous;
three hours of this slough tired the strongest: a brown stream ran
through the centre, waist deep, and washed off a little of the adhesive
mud. Our path now lay through a river covered with tikatika, a living
vegetable bridge made by a species of glossy leafed grass which felts
itself into a mat capable of bearing a man's weight, but it bends in a
foot or fifteen inches every step; a stick six feet long could not reach
the bottom in certain holes we passed. The lotus, or sacred lily, which
grows in nearly all the shallow waters of this country, sometimes
spreads its broad leave