“Manwa Sera was also despatched with a party of twenty to hunt up the missing men. Late in the afternoon they returned with the news that three of the missing men were dead. They had lost the road, and, traveling along an elephant track, had struggled on till they perished of despair, hunger, and exhaustion. Simba and the donkey boy, the ass and its load of coffee, were never seen or heard of again.
“With the sad prospect of starvation impending over us we were at various expedients to sustain life until the food purveyors should return. Early on the morning of the 10th I travelled far and searched every likely place for game; but though tracks were numerous, we failed to sight a single head. The Wangwana also roamed about the forest--for the Uveriveri ridge was covered with fine myombo trees--in search of edible roots and berries, and examined various trees to discover whether they afforded anything that could allay the grievous and bitter pangs of hunger. Some found a putrid elephant, on which they gorged themselves, and were punished with nausea and sickness. Others found a lion’s den, with two lion’s whelps, which they brought to me. Meanwhile, Frank and I examined the medical stores, and found to our great joy we had sufficient oatmeal to give every soul two cupfuls of thin gruel. A ‘Torquay dress trunk’ of sheet-iron was at once emptied of its contents and filled with twenty-five gallons of water, into which were put ten pounds of oatmeal and four one-pound tins of ‘revalenta arabica.’ How the people, middle-aged and young gathered round that trunk, and heaped fuel underneath that it might boil the quicker! How eagerly they watched it lest some calamity should happen, and clamored, when it was ready, for their share. And how inexpressibly satisfied they seemed as they tried to make the most of what they received, and with what fervor they thanked ‘God’ for his mercies!”
On the 12th of January, Stanley reached Suna, where he halted four days. Owing to the deplorable condition of his people, but through the evident restlessness of the Warimi tribe at their presence, the insufficient quantity of food that could be purchased, and the growing importunings of the Wangwana to be led away from such a churlish and suspicious people, Stanley was sorely perplexed. He had now over thirty men on the sick list, and among them Edward Pocock, one of the young Englishmen, and who subsequently died. Owing to the sickness of temper from which the Warimi suffered, it became imperative that he should keep moving, if only two or three miles a day. Accordingly, on the 17th of January, he moved from his camp, the sick being carried in hammocks. Hundreds of the natives, fully armed, kept up with the caravan, on either side of its path.