It would have been a disappointment if, after all our trouble and discomfort, somebody else had had the honour of taking Nyangwe.

This notion had, I think, a great deal to do with Commandant Dhanis' prompt attack on the town within an hour of our having the canoes which made it possible. During the morning of the 4th March we struck camp and immediately formed on the river bank. The canoes started loaded with soldiers, each white officer having in his charge about thirty or forty men. It was certainly a grand sight to see over a hundred canoes in open order, full of yelling demons, dashing down the stream on the doomed city. We succeeded in landing and in taking the greater part of the town, scarcely firing a shot.

By ten o'clock that evening we had fortified ourselves in the higher