being a thatch in the course of removal, nothing of its means of locomotion being visible but the thirty or forty feet of the bearers, the foremost of whom had some holes pierced in the roof by which they could see their way; many of the people were singing at their work, and some of them carrying heavy burdens passed me at a good smart trot. The very queens found work to do, and I noticed them, assisted by their maids, moving large bundles of the grass. Hearing the words “moro, nyaka makoa,” (good morning, white doctor), I turned and found that the greeting came from Makumba the chief, who was passing by with a number of his people. Nearly all the residents in the old town were taking down their huts and preparing to migrate, none more busy than Blockley, who was packing up all his goods in readiness to transfer them from his present enclosure to a grass hut that the king had directed should be built for him in the new settlement.
While I was sitting in my hut writing my journal on the following day, I was startled by the cry of “molemo, molemo!”’ (fire, fire!) and immediately I rushed outside; a single hut was in flames, but as it was standing in the midst of some hundreds more, the reed-thatch roofs of which were all extra dry from the heat of the weather, there was every reason to fear that others would catch fine, and that the brisk east wind that was blowing would fan the flames into a general conflagration. Crowds of women and children came shrieking and holloaing down the pathway from the river, and to increase the commotion, as the fire spread there were the constant reports of the guns that had been left in the huts,
