We made a march of two hours the next day, and then despatched forty-five choice men ahead to try and obtain meal for the salvation of the Banalya men and the Madis, whose powers were too weak for further effort. The scouts returned within twenty-four hours with a goat, which was at once slaughtered to make thirty gallons of soup. When thickened with two pounds of wheaten flour, the soup made a most welcome meal for over sixty men. We reached Indemau by 10 A.M. on the 25th. The village was situated in a hollow at the base of a mount, and was distant from the Dui branch of the Ihuru six miles.
At Indemau the long-enduring members of the Expedition received another respite from total annihilation. The plantain groves were extensive and laden with fruit, and especially with ripe mellow plantains whose fragrance was delicious. But in the same manner that it was impossible to teach these big children to economise their rations, so it was impossible to teach them moderation when they found themselves in the midst of plenty. At Andikumu an army might have been supplied with good wholesome food, but the inordinate voracity of the famished people had been followed by severe indigestion, and at Indemau their intemperate appetites brought on such sickening repletion that we were engaged every morning in listening to their complaints and administering enemata to relieve the congested bodies.
A path from Indemau was discovered, leading across the Dui River; there was another leading to Indeperri, a large settlement about fifteen miles N.E. from Fort Bodo. It had been my original purpose to steer a course through the forest which would take us direct to the grass-land, along a more northerly route than the line of Ipoto and Fort Bodo, after sending a detachment to settle accounts with Kilonga-Longa; but in our endeavour to find a ford or ferry across the Ihuru we had been compelled by the high flood to continue parallel with the river until now. Observation proved us to be in N. lat. 1° 47′ and E. long. 29° 7′ 45″. But the discovery of Remington cartridges among the stores of a native caravan in these unknown parts, and yet within a reasonable distance of Fort Bodo, notwithstanding a rational assurance that Fort Bodo was impregnable and the garrison were now safe with Emin Pasha on the Nyanza, had intruded doubts in my mind which I thought would best be resolved by deflecting our course southward, and sweeping past the old Fort, and seeing with our own eyes what had really occurred. Mr. Bonny was therefore sent with the chief Rashid and sixty men, to build a bridge across the Dui River.