Next morning the robber party came with about thirty yards of strong striped English calico, an axe, and two hoes for our acceptance, and returned the copper rings, as the chief was a great man, and did not need the ornaments of my men, but we noticed that they were taken back again.  I divided the cloth among my men, and pleased them a little by thus compensating for the loss of the ox.  I advised the chief, whose name we did not learn, as he did not deign to appear except under the alias Matiamvo, to get cattle for his own use, and expressed sorrow that I had none wherewith to enable him to make a commencement.  Rains prevented our proceeding till Thursday morning, and then messengers appeared to tell us that their chief had learned that all the cloth sent by him had not been presented; that the copper rings had been secreted by the persons ordered to restore them to us, and that he had stripped the thievish emissaries of their property as a punishment.  Our guides thought these were only spies of a larger party, concealed in the forest through which we were now about to pass.  We prepared for defense by marching in a compact body, and allowing no one to straggle far behind the others.  We marched through many miles of gloomy forest in gloomier silence, but nothing disturbed us.  We came to a village, and found all the men absent, the guides thought, in the forest, with their countrymen.  I was too ill to care much whether we were attacked or not.  Though a pouring rain came on, as we were all anxious to get away out of a bad neighborhood, we proceeded.  The thick atmosphere prevented my seeing the creeping plants in time to avoid them; so Pitsane, Mohorisi, and I, who alone were mounted, were often caught; and as there is no stopping the oxen when they have the prospect of giving the rider a tumble, we came frequently to the ground.  In addition to these mishaps, Sinbad went off at a plunging gallop, the bridle broke, and I came down backward on the crown of my head.  He gave me a kick on the thigh at the same time.  I felt none the worse for this rough treatment, but would not recommend it to others as a palliative in cases of fever!  This last attack of fever was so obstinate that it reduced me almost to a skeleton.  The blanket which I used as a saddle on the back of the ox, being frequently wet, remained so beneath me even in the hot sun, and, aided by the heat of the ox, caused extensive abrasion of the skin, which was continually healing and getting sore again.  To this inconvenience was now added the chafing of my projecting bones on the hard bed.

On Friday we came to a village of civil people on the banks of the Loajima itself, and we were wet all day in consequence of crossing it.  The bridges over it, and another stream which we crossed at midday, were submerged, as we have hitherto invariably found, by a flood of perfectly clear water.  At the second ford we were met by a hostile party who refused us further passage.  I ordered my men to proceed in