old traveller. Still he was
unable to obtain fresh porters to carry on his baggage, and he was once
more obliged to part from Grant.

Having gone some way, Speke was taken seriously ill, while, again, his
guides refused to proceed. This occurred while he was in the district
of a chief, named Lumeresi, who insisted on his coming to his village,
feeling jealous that he had remained in that of another inferior chief.
Lumeresi was not in when Speke arrived, but on his return, at night, he
beat all his drums to celebrate the event, and fired a musket; in reply
to which Speke fired three shots. The chief, however, though he
pretended to be very kind, soon began to beg for everything he saw.
Speke, who felt that his best chance of recovering from his illness was
change of air, ordered his men to prepare a hammock in which he might be
conveyed. Although he had already given the chief a handsome _hongo_,
or tribute, consisting of a red blanket, and a number of pretty common
cloths for his children, no sooner did he begin to move than Lumeresi
placed himself in his way and declared that he could not bear the idea
of his white visitor going to die in the jungle. His true object,
however, was to obtain a robe, or _deole_, which Speke had determined
not to give him. However, at length, rather than be detained, he
presented the only one which he had preserved for the great chief,
Rumanika, into whose territories he was about to proceed. Scarcely had
the chief received it, than he insisted on a further _hongo_, exactly
double what had previously been given him. Again Speke yielded, and
presented a number of brass-wire bracelets, sixteen cloths, and a
hundred necklaces of coral beads, which were to pay for Grant as well as
himself.

When about to march, however, Bui and Nasib were not to be found. On
this, Speke determined to send back Bombay to Caze for fresh guides and
interpreters, who were to join Grant on their return.

In the meantime, while lying in a fearfully weak condition, reduced
almost to a skeleton, he was startled, at midnight, out of his sleep by
hearing the hurried tramp of several men. They proved to be Grant's
porters, who, in short excited sentences, told him that they had left
Grant standing under a tree with nothing but a gun in his hand; that his
Wanguann porters had been either killed or driven away, having been
attacked by Myonga's men, who had fallen upon the caravan, and shot,
speared, and plund