Ij8	JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS
none of these diseases could be transmitted by fleas
in a rat's fur. One felt that even the dust in the
cramped dirty town was poisonous, no less than fleas.
And yet all the time, below the fear and the irrita-
tion, one was aware of a curious lightness and
freedom; one might drink, that was a temporary
weakening; but one was happy all the same; one had
crossed the boundary into country really strange;
surely one had gone deep this time.
Buzie Country
If we seldom sank as low as Duogobmai we seldom
rose as high as Nicoboozu, which we reached next
day after an easy cheerful trek of only three hours.
Alfred had gone home; he had decided that the
journey was not going to be a holiday; and in his
place Vande had taken a friend of Babu's, a Buzie
man called Guawa. Guawa was an asset; he had the
carriers   singing   before   Duogobmai   had   slipped
behind the trees.  He sang and he danced, danced
even when he carried a hammock or a load; I could
hear his voice down the trail, proposing the line of
an impromptu  song which the carriers  took up,
repeated, carried on.   These songs referred to their
employers; their moods and their manners were held
up to ridicule; a village when'the carriers pressed
through in full song would learn the: whole story
of their journey.   Sometimes a villager would join
in the chant, asking a question, and I could hear the
question tossed along the line until it became part
of the unending song and was answered.
At   the   village   before   Nicoboozu   the   fourth