From Zanzibar and Oman, he asked me if I
had much cloth with me. This was a question often asked by owners
of down caravans, and the reason of it is that the Arabs, in their
anxiety to make as much as possible of their cloth at the ivory
ports on the Tanganika and elsewhere, are liable to forget that
they should retain a portion for the down marches. As, indeed,
I had but a bale left of the quantity of cloth retained for
provisioning my party on the road, when outfitting my caravans
on the coast, I could unblushingly reply in the negative.
I halted a day at Kusuri to give my caravan a rest, after its
long series of marches, before venturing on the two days' march
through the uninhabited wilderness that separates the district of
Jiweh la Singa Uyanzi from the district of Tura in Unyanyembe.
Hamed preceded, promising to give Sayd bin Salim notice of my
coming, and to request him to provide a tembe for me.
On the 15th, having ascertained that Sheikh Thani would be detained
several days at Kusuri, owing to the excessive number of his people
who were laid up with that dreadful plague of East Africa, the
small-pox, I bade him farewell, and my caravan struck out of
Kusuri once more for the wilderness and the jungle.
