Here I engaged my men, paying a year's wages in advance, and
anyone who saw the grateful avidity with which they took the money and
pledged themselves to serve me faithfully would think I had a first rate
set of followers.

At last we made a start, and reaching Uzaramo, my first occupation was
to map the country by timing the rate of march with a watch, taking
compass bearings, and ascertaining by boiling a thermometer the altitude
above the sea level, and the latitude by the meridian of a star, taken
with a sextant, comparing the lunar distances with the nautical almanac.
After long marching I made a halt to send back some specimens, my
camera, and a few of the sickliest of my men, and then entered Usagara,
which includes all the country between Kingani and Mgeta rivers east and
Ugogo the first plateau west--a distance of one hundred miles. Here
water is obtainable throughout the year, and where slave hunts do not
disturb the industry of the people, cultivation thrives, but these
troubles constantly occur, and the meagre looking wretches, spiritless
and shy, retreat to the hill tops at the sight of a stranger.

At this point Baraka, the head of my Wanguana (emancipated slaves)
became discontented; ambition was fast making a fiend of him, and I
promoted Frij in his place. Shortly afterwards my Hottentots suffered
much from sickness, and Captain Grant was seized with fever. In addition
to these difficulties we found that avarice, that fatal enemy to the
negro chiefs, made them overreach themselves by exhorbitant demands for
taxes, for experience will not teach the negro who thinks only for the
moment. The curse of Noah sticks to these his grandchildren by Ham, they
require a government like ours in India, and without it the slave trade
will wipe them off the face of the earth. We travelled slowly with our
sick Hottentot lashed to a donkey; the man died when we halted, and we
buried him with Christian honours. As his comrades said, he died because
he had determined to die--an instance of that obstinate fatalism in
their mulish temperament which no kind words or threats can cure.

After crossing the hilly Usagara range, leaving the great famine lands
behind, we camped, on November 24, in the Ugogo country, which has a
wild aspect well in keeping with the natives who occupy it, and who
carry arms intended for use rather than show. They live in flat-topped
square villages, are fond of ornaments, impulsive by nature, and
a