The people were not very willing to go to punish Nsama's breach of public law, yet, on the decision of the chiefs, they went, and came back, one with a wooden stool, another with a mat, a third with a calabash of ground-nuts or some dried meat, a hoe, or a bow--poor, poor pay for a fortnight's hard work hunting fugitives and burning villages.
_16th June, 1867._--News came to-day that an Arab party in the south-west, in Lunda, lost about forty people by the small-pox ("ndue"), and that the people there, having heard of the disturbance with Nsama, fled from the Arabs, and would sell neither ivory nor food: this looks like another obstacle to our progress thither.
_17th-19th June, 1867._--Hamees went to meet the party from the south-west, probably to avoid bringing the small-pox here.

They remain at about two hours' distance.

Hamees reports that though the strangers had lost a great many people by small-pox, they had brought good news of certain Arabs still further west: one, Seide ben Umale, or Salem, lived at a village near Casembe, ten days distant, and another, Juma Merikano, or Katata Katanga, at another village further north, and Seide ben Habib was at Phueto, which is nearer Tanganyika.

This party comprises the whole force of Hamees, and he now declares that he will go to Nsama and make the matter up, as he thinks that he is afraid to come here, and so he will make the first approach to friendship.
On pondering over the whole subject, I see that, tiresome as it is to wait, it is better to do so than go south and then west, for if I should go I shall miss seeing Moero, which is said to be three days from Nsama's present abode.

His people go there for salt, and I could not come to it from the south without being known to them, and perhaps considered to be an Arab.