Beyond The Ford, A Short Half-Hour's March, We Came To Kiora.

At this filthy village of Kiora, which was well-grounded with goat-dung, and peopled with a wonderful number

Of children for a hamlet that did not number twenty families, with a hot sun pouring on the limited open space, with a fury that exceeded 128 degrees Fahrenheit; which swarmed with flies and insects of known and unknown species; I found, as I had been previously informed, the third caravan, which had started out of Bagamoyo so well fitted and supplied. The leader, who was no other than the white man Farquhar, was sick-a-bed with swollen legs (Bright's disease), unable to move.

As he heard my voice, Farquhar staggered out of his tent, so changed from my spruce mate who started from Bagamoyo, that I hardly knew him at first. His legs were ponderous, elephantine, since his leg-illness was of elephantiasis, or dropsy. His face was of a deathly pallor, for he had not been out of his tent for two weeks.

A breezy hill, overlooking the village of Kiora, was chosen by me for my camping-ground, and as soon as the tents were pitched, the animals attended to, and a boma made of thorn bushes, Farquhar was carried up by four men into my tent. Upon being questioned as to the cause of his illness, he said he did not know what had caused it. He had no pain, he thought, anywhere. I asked, "Do you not sometimes feel pain on the right side?" - "Yes, I think I do; but I don't know." - " Nor over the left nipple sometimes - a quick throbbing, with a shortness of breath?" - " Yes, I think I have. I know I breathe quick sometimes." He said his only trouble was in the legs, which were swollen to an immense size. Though he had a sound appetite, he yet felt weak in the legs.

From the scant information of the disease and its peculiarities, as given by Farquhar himself, I could only make out, by studying a little medical book I had with me, that "a swelling of the legs, and sometimes of the body, might result from either heart, liver, or kidney disease." But I did not know to what to ascribe the disease, unless it was to elephantiasis - a disease most common in Zanzibar; nor did I know how to treat it in a man who, could not tell me whether he felt pain in his head or in his back, in his feet or in his chest.

It was therefore fortunate for me that I overtook him at Kiora; though he was about to prove a sore incumbrance to me, for he was not able to walk, and the donkey-carriage, after the rough experience of the Makata valley, was failing. I could not possibly leave him at Kiora, death would soon overtake him there; but how long I could convey a man in such a state, through a country devoid of carriage, was a question to be resolved by circumstances.

On the 11th of May, the third and fifth caravans, now united, followed up the right bank of the Mukondokwa, through fields of holcus, the great Mukondokwa ranges rising in higher altitude as we proceeded west, and enfolding us in the narrow river valley round about. We left Muniyi Usagara on our right, and soon after found hill-spurs athwart our road, which we were obliged to ascend and descend.

A march of eight miles from the ford of Misonghi brought us to another ford of the Mukondokwa, where we bid a long adieu to Burton's road, which led up to the Goma pass and up the steep slopes of Rubeho. Our road left the right bank and followed the left over a country quite the reverse of the Mukondokwa Valley, enclosed between mountain ranges. Fertile soils and spontaneous vegetation, reeking with miasma and overpowering from their odour, we had exchanged for a drouthy wilderness of aloetic and cactaceous plants, where the kolquall and several thorn bushes grew paramount.

Instead of the tree-clad heights, slopes and valleys, instead of cultivated fields, we saw now the confines of uninhabited wilderness. The hill-tops were bared of their bosky crowns, and revealed their rocky natures bleached white by rain and sun. Nguru Peak, the loftiest of the Usagara cones, stood right shoulderwards of us as we ascended the long slope of dun-grey soil which rose beyond the brown Mukondokwa on the left.

At the distance of two miles from the last ford, we found a neat khambi, situated close to the river, where it first broke into a furious rapid.

The next morning the caravan was preparing for the march, when I was informed that the "Bana Mdogo" - little master - Shaw, had not yet arrived with the cart, and the men in charge of it. Late the previous night I had despatched one donkey for Shaw, who had said he was too ill to walk, and another for the load that was on the cart; and had retired satisfied that they would soon arrive. My conclusion, when I learned in the morning that the people had not yet come in, was that Shaw was not aware that for five days we should have to march through a wilderness totally uninhabited. I therefore despatched Chowpereh, a Mgwana soldier, with the following note to him: - "You will, upon receipt of this order pitch the cart into the nearest ravine, gully, or river, as well as all the extra pack saddles; and come at once, for God's sake, for we must not starve here!"

One, two, three, and four hours were passed by me in the utmost impatience, waiting, but in vain, for Shaw. Having a long march before us, I could wait no longer, but went to meet his party myself. About a quarter of mile from the ford I met the van of the laggards - stout burly Chowpereh - and, O cartmakers, listen! he carried the cart on his head - wheels, shafts, body, axle, and all complete; he having found that carrying it was much easier than drawing it.

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