Zanzibar; and Two Months in East Africa.

By Richard F. Burton

Blackwood's Edinbourgh Magazine,

Volume 83 February 1858

March 1858

April 1858

{Some months ago we received a note, dated Zanzibar, 10^th June, from Captain Burton, the accomplished author of The Pilgrimage to Meccah, saying that he had sent us the following journal, which however did not reach us until the present month.

In his note Captain Burton said that it was no use to write to him, as he was on the point of again plunging into Africa, and would be non inventus for some time to come.

Our readers will join us in hoping that we may soon receive tidings of the safe return of the gallant and indefatigable traveller.}

"To animate and influence the hearts of all the noble gentlemen who desire to see the world."-La Broequière.

Chapter I.-Zanzibar.

"There is probably no part of the world where the British Government has so long had a Resident, where there are always some half-a-dozen merchants and planters, of which we know so little, as of the capital and part of the kingdom of one of the most faithful of our allies, with whom we have for half a century (since 1804) been on terms of intimacy."-Times, Bombay Geogr. Sociery, 1856.

Of the gladdest moments, methinks, in human life, is the departing upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one effort the fetters of Habit-the leaden weight of Routine-the cloak of carking Care, and the slavery of Home-man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of youth, excitement gives new vigour to the muscles, and a sense of sudden freedom adds an inch to the stature. Afresh dawns the morn of life, again the bright world is beautiful to the eye, and the glorious face of nature gladdens the soul. A journey in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope-the sister Graces of our moral being.

The shrill screaming of the boatswain's whistle, and sundry shouts of "Stand by yer booms!"-"All ready for'ard!"-"Now make sail!"-sounded in mine ears with a sweet significance. The H.E.I.C.'s sloop of war "Elphinstone," Captain Freyhard, I. N. commanding, swung round in obedience to orders, and as the rosy beams of morning leaped gaily over the green-capped head of Elephants, we bade a long farewell to Bombay. It was a Red-Calendar day-a day to be noted with white clay, that 2d of December 1856.

We were not fanned across the Indian Ocean by the delicatest airs: a stiff breeze ran us right home without a flaw, and the weather was varied by occasional showers and a squall or two followed by a high combing sea. The track seemed a desert; not a being of life, except gannets and flying-fish, met our sight. The good old ship-now in her thirty-third year-made an average of 150, and, on one occasion, a run of 200 knots per diem, accomplishing the 2500 miles in eighteen days. On the afternoon of the 18^th December, we hove in sight of a strip of land, blue and blurred by distance, then waxing purple, and lastly green. This was Pemba or Fezirat el Khazra, "the Emerald Isle," as this outlying picket of East Intertropical Africa is called by the inhabitants of tawny Oman.

We had tasted the contrast between the order and cleanliness of a ship-of-war, and the confusion, impurity, and annoyances of a Red-Sea steam-packet. Here were no rattling, heaving throbs, making you tremulous as a jelly in the canicule; nor coal-smoke intrusive as on a German railway; nor thirsty cockroaches exploring man's mouth for water; nor cabins rank with sulphuretted hydrogen; nor decks where on pallid and jaundiced passengers shook convulsive shoulders as they rushed to and from the bulwarks and the taffrail. No "larboard and starboard exclusiveness;" no flirting Abigails tending majestic dames who looked crooked in all beyond the salvation-pale of their own "set," no peppery civilaus rubbing skirts against heedless griffins; nor fair libs ill-treating the letter H; not "officers" singing lullabies to their etiolated terrible infants, and lacking but one little dispensation of Nature to become the completest of nurses. The "Elphinstone" belonged not to the category "Shippe of Helle:" we would willingly have drawn out our cruise with the jovial Captain, and the good fellows in the gun-room, over many and many a path of waves.

But Fate willed otherwise. On the night of the 18^th December we anchored off Tumbatu, one of the long, narrow coralline reefs which fringe these shores. It is scantily inhabited by a race of Makhadim or serviles, who have preserved in El Telam a variety of heathen abominations. They repair for divination to a kind of Trophonius' cave. At funerals they lay our and abuse the corpse after his wise. "Fellow," a man will cry, "but yesterday I asked thee for some tobacco and thou didst refuse, hein? Where now is the use of it?" Or says a woman, "Dost thou remember making fierce love to me on a certain occasion? Much good can thy love do, now that thou goest to feed ugly worms in the grave!" I have heard of a Hindu cast in Madras, who, after filling the corpse's mouth with milk and rapping his face with a conch-shell, most opprobiously insult its female relatives. The Arrawk Indians of Guina also, according to travellers, switch the body's opened eyes with thorns, anoint the lips and cheeks with lard, and use alternately sweet and bitter words. The idea underlying the act is probably the same as the Irish "wake"-a test whether the clay be really inanimate. The Tumbatu men are celebrated as fishers and sailors: they burn large fires of dry leaves upon the sand, and spear their prey as it flocks to the light. They are an industrious race for these climates; their low jungly ledge of ground obliges them to fetch water from Zanzibar Island, and their sooty skins testify its heat.

Next morning, as we appeared on deck,

"Sabæan odours from the spicy shore,"

affected the sensorium with a sense of novelty, pleasant after the ocean's briny breath. It is generally doubted that India can thus be "nosed" from afar; and certain facetiousnesses, played upon the softer man, have made scepticism fashionable. Here, however, there is no mistake; the night-breeze from the island is heavy with a clove-perfume, which the European residents are careful to exclude.

After a two hours' sail, the first terminus of our voyage declared itself. Most prepossessing was the distant view of this storehouse of Eastern Africa. Earth, sea, and air were all soft and smiling as a poet's conception of Paradise, with a winning feminine beauty; in Arab phrase, a repose unto the eye of the beholder. The central ridges gently swelling, were streaked with rows of spice-trees resembling from afar the vines of romantic Provence. Contrasting with these prim plantations, the tall palm, a living column, luxuriant and perennial, rose behind and above the bright metallic underwood which separated the land from the snowy foam creaming upon the yellow shore. Intense was the glowing azure of the sky: every object stood out distinct and brilliant, as if viewed through ethereal medium. Under a blaze of sun that touched everything with burnished gold, the sea was a sheet of purest sapphire, save where it showed

"A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung
From brooding clouds;"

the lucid depths were stained with amethyst; the transparent shoals with lightest chrysoprase; and each ship anchored in the bay hovered over her own reflected image. More like Malabar than dreary Arabia and sterile Persia, this land has a spring even in its midsummer.

We glided south by east through a breach in the coralline reef that recalled the gateways of Jeddah. Presently, detached houses sprinkled the shore. A large unfinished pile, white-washed, but fast decaying, was called by our pilot Akhir el Zaman-the End of Time. Under divers inauspicious omens, it had been commenced by the late Prince in his latter days; and the death of sundry masons killed by a falling wall, rendered it so hateful to the Arabs that it will probably remain uninhabitable. Then, at the distance of a mile, appeared the royal harem and demesne of Mtony, a large rusty building with an extinguisher-roofed balcony, of dingy planking. It has a quaint kind of Gothic look, like a castle in a play, of the Schloss of a pensionless German baron: the luxuriant trees in rear have the faux air of an English park. A fetid lagoon here diffuses pestilence around it; and skippers anchoring off Mtony for convenience of watering with the purest element on the island, have, in the course of a few days, had occasion to lament the loss of half their crews. Presently we floated past the "Shah Allum," an old fifty-gun frigate, of Bombay build: she showed no colours, as is usual when a ship enters: and the few men on board shouted information which neither we nor the pilot understood. This worthy, as we drew near, decided from the absence of Firday flags on the consular staffs, that some great man had gone to his long home. The "Elphinstone," however, would not have the trouble of casting loose her guns for nothing: with H. H., the Sazzid ⁽¹⁾ of Zanzibar's ensign-a plain ret-at the fore, and the union at the main, she cast anchor in Front Bay, about half a mile from shore, and fired a salute of twenty-one. A gay bunting thereupon flew up to every truck and the brass cannon of the "Victoria" roared a response of twenty-two. We had arrived on the fortieth, of the last day of mourning.

St. Julian, patron of the wayfarer, had frowned upon us this time: the first visit to Colonel Hamerton, H. B. M.'s Consul, showed us the extent of our mishap. H. H. Sazzid Said of Maskat, upon whose aid and influence we calculated, had died on his way from Arabia to Zanzibar. State affairs had not been settled between rival brothers, Sazzid Suwazui, the eldest, and successor, to whom Oman had been left, and Sazzid Majid, installed by his father Viceroy of the African possessions. This prince, moreover, being still confined to the house by an attack of the small-pox, which, during the last three years, has twice carried off thousands of the inhabitants, was ashamed to show a pitted face to subjects or visitors. Colonel Hamerton, now our mainstay, was also in poor health. The northern coast of the mainland, about Lamu, as usual on such occasions, was in anarchy, the southern suffering from drought and famine. We spent some heavy hours that night. I will relieve my feelings by describing the town of Zanzibar:--

Zanzibar (to begin with the beginning) lies in S. lat. 6 9', and in E. long. 39 14'. The chief, and indeed the only settlement upon the island, it occupies one side of a wide curve on the coast of Coralline. Ras Chhangaay, "Sandy Point" (this name, corrupted to "Shangany," has erroneously been given to the whole town in charts), divides the front harbour from a back bay, where ships anchor, especially during the N.E. monsoon, to avoid the swell whilst landing cargo. The place is modern, owing its existence to the exigencies of trade. At the beginning of the present century it consisted of a fort and a ragged line of mat huts, where the Suk Mahogo, or Manioc Market, now stands: as late as 1842, it boasted. But five storehouses of the humblest construction, and the now crowded east end was in those days a palm plantation. But an Arab ever builds as soon and as extensively as his means permit. Zanzibar now contains in the season about fifty thousand inhabitants (slaves included), and there cannot be less than three thousand stationary habitations.

This normal Arab town forms the segment of a circle, the chord resting upon the sea, and the arc fronting the plantations of the interior. It is a mere "dicky"-a clean front, concealing something unsightly. Facing northwards is a line, about a mile and a half long, of large Arab houses, glaring, dazzling, whitewashed like sepulchres, and unrelieved save by a straggling cocoa, instead of domes and minarets. Like Jeddah and the Red-Sea cities, the material is wholly lime and coraline. The best houses-of course, those of the European merchants-are in the west end; wealthy "natives," and a few foreigners, inhabit the eastern extremity. In rear of the dicky, and at both flanks, is a foul dense mass of dwelling-places, where the poor and the slaves pig together. There are huts of cadjan-matting, with or without wattle-and-dab walls, windowless, blackened externally by wind and sun and consisting internally of a "but and a ben," surrounded by projecting eaves, forming a deep and shady verandah, where articles are exposed for sale. The poorest classes content themselves with mere sheds. Two tumble-down bridges, ignorant of the arch, span the foul lagoon, which, at the Lyzygies, converts the settlement into almost an island, and leaves behind it a legacy of fevers and terrible maladies. The drainage of the front is good, owing to the seaward slopes, but the inner town is in a dead flat. Drainage is all in all where tropical suns shine; drainage has rendered even Sierra Leone and our West Indian barracks salubrious. In the hands of Europeans, Zanzibar would soon be drained into healthiness; but the Arab looks upon pestilence as a minor plague compared with the trouble of cutting a trench or building a dam.

The tides, here rising twelve, sometimes fifteen, and even sixteen feet, occasionally walk into the lower apartments. Unchecked by quay or breakwater, this nuisance is on the increase. Off Chhangany Point, where, in 1823, stood a clump of huts and a mosque, five fathoms of water now roll. The British Consulate, formerly many yards removed from the surf, at present requires the protection of piles and rubble. Some of the larger houses have sunk four feet, and have sloped nine from terrace to ground, owing to the instability of their soppy foundations. These coral formations are peculiarly fickle. The "Middle Shoal," about 15 years ago, was awash; it is now high and dry. The "Tree Island" of our earliest charts has been undermined and carried away by the waves. On the other hand, the sea has encroached upon Mtony, where the Prince's flagstaff four times required removal.

At Zanzibar the line of streets is, as it should be, deep, narrow, and winding. In the west end a pavement of chunam, provided with a gutter-the first I have seen in "Orient climes"-carries off the violent rain, and secures coolness and purity. The east end shows attempts at similar civilisation; but green and miry puddles argue at preponderance of black population. Houses are on the favourite Arab plan familiar to travellers in Spain and her colonies: some of the oldest buildings in Galway and western Ireland still display the type-a "patio," or hollow paved quadrangle, where animals may be penned for safety, with galleries, into which the rooms open, running round the several floors. But architecture is at its lowest ebb. There is not a straight line in the masonry; the arches are of every shape and form, and the floors will have a foot of depression between the centre and the corners. The roofs, or rather terraces, supported by Zanzibar rafters, and walls of massy thickness, are copiously chunamed: here men sit to enjoy the sundown breezes. Bandanis, or penthouses of cadjans, garnish the house-tops in the native town: Europeans do not allow these adjuncts, fires being frequent, and the slaves being addicted to aiding the work of destruction in hope of plunder. Some foreigners secure the delights of a cool night by erecting upper cabins of planking: the oldster, however, conforms to Arab precept, and always perspires during the hours of sleep. The higher the house, the larger the doorway, the huger the studs which adorn the massive planks, and the heavier the padlock, the greater is the owner's dignity. An inscription cut in the wood of the lintel secures the entrance from witchcraft; and half a yard of ships' chain-cable, from thieves. Even the little square holes placed high up in the wall, and doing duty for windows, are closely barred. As glass cannot be used in sleeping-rooms, by reason of the heat, rough or painted plank-shutters supply its place, and persiannes deform the best habitations. Arabs here, as elsewhere, love long narrow apartments, with many apertures towards the sea, securing the breeze essential to health: they as carefully close the eastern side-walls against the spicy feverish land-wind. The reception-hall is always on the ground-floor. It contrasts strongly with an English room, where the uncomfortable confusion of furniture, and the crowding of ornaments ruin the proportions, and "put out" the eye. Here the long lines and the rows of niches, which, as elsewhere in the East, supply the want of tables, are unbroken save by the presence of a chandelier and a mirror, a Persian rug or carpet for the dais, a matting over the floor, and half-a-dozen Indian black-wood chairs. Such is the upholstery of an Arab palace and an Italian villa. In the houses of the very wealthy, porcelain, glass-ware ornaments, and articles of European luxury, lie about the niches. The abodes of the poorer classes are provided with kitandahs, or cartels of cord, twisted round a rude wooden frame, trays for food, gourds, coarse stools, pots, and similar necessaries.

The centre of the town frontage is occupied by the Fort, one of those naïve, straight-curtained, round-towered, crenellated, and tumble-down erections, whose plan dates probably from the days of Peleg. It is fronted by a detached battery of twenty guns, with embrasures so close together that the first salve would blow away the thin wall and with armature so placed that every bullet striking the Fort must send a billet into the battery. Between the two, a space of fifty feet or so represents the arsenal: a score of iron cannonades, and a few fine old brass pieces, probably the plunder of Hormuz-one of them bears the tent of a heavy blow-lie piled on the right of the Fort entrance. The gateway is the usual intricate manner of barbican: the square excrescence from the main body contains upper rooms for the Beloch Yemadar or commandant; the interior ground-floor is a large vestibule, and the soldiery, with their armed slaves, lounge, play, chew betel, and chat upon the shady masonry-benches at the outer door. On the left of the Fort is a cadjan shed, where native artists are continually occupied in making carriages for the battery, whose furniture now lies upon the ground. The experiment of firing a gun was lately attempted: the piece reared up and fell backward, smashing the crazy woodwork and crushing two gunner-slaves. Some traveller has observed that a launch would suffice to capture this Fort. It was once, according to accounts, taken by a drunken American sailor, who, determining to liberate a pair of citizens in trouble, attacked the guard cutlass in hand, accompanied by a huge Newfoundland, and remaining master of a bloodless field, waved his flag in triumph upon the walls. Melancholy to relate, this here fell by African fraud. The discomfited slaves, holding a long rope, ran round him, till, wound up like a windlass, he could no longer keep his footing.

The interior of the Fort is jammed with soldier's huts and courts, divided by rickety walls. Here, too, is the only jail on the island. Its stocks, fetters, iron collars, and waist-chains do not prevent Black Man from chatting, singing, and gambling with cowries and pebbles. But the most refractory white that ever knocked down merchant-skipper has not fortitude to endure in it a second night. Such is the Arab's beau ideal of a prison: the very word should cause the horrors and the goose-skin. They term our Bombay jail "El Bistan" (the garden) because the courts are planted with a few shrubs; and, with them, a Bistan has always an arrière penée of Paradise. Foreigners usually visit the prison to see its standing curiosity-one Mezingera, a wretched clansman of the villain Panzij, who had beaten the death-drum whilst his chief was cutting M. Maizan the French traveller's throat. Mezingera was seized, instead of his master, by an Arab expedition, and chained two years in front of the French Consulate. Since that time (1847) he has been heavily ironed to a gun in the Fort, under a cadjan-shed, where he can neither stand nor lie; yet the wretch looks fat and well.

Eastward of the Fort is the custom-house, an Arab bourse, where millions of dollars change hands under the dirtiest shed, a long low cadjan roof supported by two dozen rough uprights. It is surrounded by sacks and bales, baskets and packages, heaps of hides, old ships' tanks, piles of valuable woods, layer of ivory, and a heterogeneous mass of waifs and strays. The small adjacent square shows a dilapidated and unfinished line of arches, the fragments of a new custom-house: it was begun twenty-six or twenty-seven years ago, but the superstition of Yayaram, the late Hindu collector, who had become rich under the matting, but was not sure that stone and chunam would be as lucky to him, condemned it to rot. This is a general idea with Orientals: they are full of wise instances concerning the downfall of great men who have exposed themselves to the shafts of misfortune by enlarging their gates, or by building for themselves palaces.

In the centre of the square opposite the palace stands the Sazzid's flagstaff, where the Bakur-the Kurbaj of these regions-brings man to a sense of his duty, and where according to an American traveller, ⁽²⁾ distinguished criminals are fastened to the pole, and bound upwards from the ankles to the throat, till "the soul of the dying man is literally squeezed out of its earthly tenement." I may observe, en passant, that in this part of the world the two potent romancers, Ignorance and Interest, have been busily at work. An industrious Frenchman, seeing scrapings of elephants' tusks upon the beach, reported to the Prussian Government that ivory is so plentiful as to be thrown up by the tide. Adventurers of all nations have circulated the most ridiculous tales; amazons bestriding battle-bullocks-a confusion with the 5000 women-musketeers of Dahomey, or possibly a revival of El Masudi, who, in our tenth century, reports that the king of Zanj, or Zanzibar, commanded an army mounted, like modern Kafira, on oxen-hordes of steel-clad negroes, and brilliant troops of horse-artillery:-a battery was actually sent out to the Sazzid as a present from Woolwich!

The palace, fronted by a stuccoed platform that supports eight or nine small brass guns, placed in barbette for show, is a kind of double-storied barrack, 140 feet long, white washed, with tender green shutters, pent-roofed with dingy-red tiles, provided seawards with a verandah for levees, and a few stunted trees for beauty, and backed by stables full of Oman blood, an oratory and a graveyard, where runaway slaves, chained together by the neck, lie in the shade.

The public buildings in Zanzibar are poor. The mosques, which adorn other Eastern towns with light and airy turrets, breaking the monotony of square white houses, are here in the simplest form. There are about thirty of these buildings, oblong flat-roofed rooms, divided internally by dwarf rows of square and polygonal columns supporting Saracenic arches, broad, pointed, and lanceated, with inner emarginations in the shape of small crescents or scollops. A Shafei place of worship boasts of a diminutive cone, resembling an Egyptian pigeon-tower, and another has a dwarf excrescence like the lantern of a lighthouse. The Kojahs have a ruined old mosque at Nazimozza, on the sea-shore south of the town: and the Shiahs their place of meeting in the Kipoudah Quarter. Prayers of the great festivals, during the Prince's life, were recited at Mtony: now in the Palace oratory, and other mosques. Sazzid Said also built a gable-ended house, after the model of the Dutch factory at Bunder Abbas. Unhappily a large chandelier dropped from the ceiling, and gave the place, which was intended for levees and a "hall of pleasure," a permanent bad name. It has ever since been shut up.

There are four Suk or bazars at Zanzibar; the fish-market lies behind the Suk Mahogo, a long street in the sough of the town, where paddy and grain, cloth and cotton, vegetables and provisions, generally are for sale; and eastward is Suk Melinde, where the butchers expose their vendibles. The best articles disappear before 7 A.M., after which time nought but refuse remains. The most characteristic spot in Zanzibar-the slave auctions are held in an empty walled court-is undoubtedly the salt bazar at the foot of the fort's eastern bastion. It derives its name from huge heaps of saline sand, exposed for sale by the Mekranis and the Suri Arabs. Being near the custom-house, it is thronged with people, and gives, like the bazars of Cairo and Damascus, an exaggerated idea of the population. The staple material is a double line of negresses and black youth, with heaps of sun-dried manioc, mangoes, pine-apples, greasy fritters, the abominable jack-fruit, and redolent fish piled up between their extended legs. They vary the tedium of plaiting leaves and mat-weaving, with conversations arguing an admirable conformation of the articulating organs, and a somewhat lax morality. Pairs of muscular Hazramant porters, hobbling along with bales of goods and packs of hides suspended from a pole, pass chanting down the central road, kicking out of their way the humped cows, who placidly munch offal, fruits, and vegetables under the shadow of their worshippers the Banyans. Stout Bhattias, traders from Cutch, distinguished by high features, pale skins, shaven beards, peaked turbans of spotted purple or crimson edged with gold, snowy cotton coats, and immaculate loin-cloths, chaffer with yellow Indian Kojahs; tricky-faced men with evil eyes and silky beards, forked after the fashion of ancient Rustam. More picturesque than these, gaunt light-brown Arabs from the Gulf, whose unkempt elf-locks flow low over their saffron-stained shirts, armed with two-handed swords, daggers, and small round hide-targes, stalk like beasts of prey, eyeing the crowd with cut-throat stare and single gaze. Sometimes a white man-how hideous his garb appears!-threads the streets, arousing the mangy curs, and using the stick upon the naked shoulders that obstruct him. Here and there waddles an Arab woman-a heap of unwashed clothes on invisible feet, with the Maskat masque exposing only her eye-balls. The black population, male and female, is more varied. Here is the tall Mhiao woman, of stalwart frame and sooty skin, known by the hole which, pierced in her upper lip, allows a pearl to shine through the outer darkness, and her man, with cauterised skin worked and raised in intricate patterns over all his muscular trunk. The half-caste Sawahili girl wears a single piece of loose red or blue check bound tight under her arms, and extending to her ankles; her frizzy crop of hair is twisted into a multitude of lines, which have the appearance of being razor-traced upon the scalp; one wing of her flat nose is pierced to admit a bone or metal stud, and the lobes of her ears are distended with wooden pegs or twists of palm-leaf, which, by continued pressure, enlarge the aperture to a prodigious extent. The slave shaves her head into the semblance of a magnified coco-nut. She is accompanied by her hopeful, a small black imp ignorant of clothing; on his head is a water-jar bigger than his own potbelly, and he screams Na-kújá-"I come"-to his friends, who are otherwise disporting themselves. There a group of Wanyassa, with teeth filed into shark shape, are "chaffing" old Shylock, an Arab slave-dealer; whilst Wazegura, with patterned skins, scowl evilly at the Suri Nakhoda, the professed kidnapper of their race. The tattoo distinguishes this confusion of tribes; all, however, have the common national marks, gashes, pelagra, and smallpox. But see two Moslem Sawahili have met; let us listen to the lengthy greetings exchanged:--

A.-"Yambo?" (the state?)
B.-"Yambo sana!" (the state is good!)
A.-I seize the feet!"
B.-"How hast thou eaten and slept?"
A.-I have made my reverential bow."
B.-"Yambo?"
A.-"It is good!"
B.-"Like unto gold?"
A.-"Like unto gold!"
B.-"Like unto coral?"
A.-"Like unto coral!"
B.-"Like unto pearl?"
A.-"Like unto pearl!"
B.-"In happiness kuahery! (farewell!")
A.-"In happiness let us meet, if Allah please."
B.-"Hem!"
A.-"Hum!" (drawn out like the German's "So-o-o!")

Most national salutations, from "How do you do?" to "How do you carry yourself?" are below the organisation of those that use them. But these efforts of African politeness, performed with a scrupulous earnestness by a pair of gueux, are amusing in a high degree.

Chapter II.-Departure From Zanzibar.

"The billows are all sparkling
And bounding in the light,
Like creatures in whose sunny veins
The blood is running bright."-Barry Cornwall.

The beauties of this Hormos Episalos-the open road of the Periplus-are the labours of the Lithophyte,

"Sea-girt isles,
That like to rich and various gems inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep."

These are five in number-Champany Island, Kibandiko, Changu, Bawy, and Chumby. I prefer their less barbarous European names. Northmost is French Island,-here, as at Canton, a cemetery for Europeans, more decently buried than at Maskat, where they have their choice of a dunghill or the Cove. Formerly this Death's Acre was frequented by turtle-fishers. "Mahogo," however, has seen so many ghastly visions of yellow-faced ghosts rising from the growth of Christian graves, that he now abandons the green clump to naval and commercial sportsmen, who repair here to shoot the Sazzid's tame deer, and occasionally other brownish objects imperfectly seen through the bushes. Westward, and connected at low tides by a practicable reef, lies the Ponton-the hulk-a ledge of verdure. It is separated from Middle Island by a channel deep enough for a man-of-war; and the neighbouring shoals supply certain small rock-oysters of by no means despicable flavour. The most important is Bawy, or Turtle Island, a long coralline bank, covered with tall cocos, which are the Sazzid's property, governed by a peculiarly vicious baboon deported from Zanzibar, and used, as Colaba was of old, "to keep antelopes, goats, and other beasts of delight." Near it is the celebrated Harp-shell bank, so rich before its produce was spoiled for watch-dials. Furthest to the south is Isle la Passe, which, mistaken for Bawy, has caused many a shipwreck.

Far westward, across the blue expanse of ocean, lies a faint line of flat coast, broken by high and remarkable cones. Within the islands is an animated scene. Over the outer waters scuds a mosquito fleet of Galawa-canoes and monoxyles-cutting the waves like flying proas, and most skilfully handled by the sable fishermen. Some of these negroes, especially those of Brava, have retained the broad-brimmed straw-hat which they borrowed from their conquerors the portuguese. The "pequenos batteis" of the Lusiad are still the same, except that a disproportioned sail of American cotton, based upon a pair of outriggers ten or eleven feet square, in some cases now supplies the place of "velos il'huma folhas de palma bem tecidas." Many progress by means of a loin-cloth held up in the bow by a negro acting mast; others are propelled by a single paddle with a broad curved blade, shifted from right to left, and pulled, as amongst the Mamdans, towards the paddler. They form a curious national contrast with the launches and lighters that unload European merchandise.

The north-east monsoon being the season at Zanzibar, the two bays present a busy scene. Over the square near the custom-house, a mob of "natives," dense as bees, swarm to feast their eyes upon an approaching ship of war. Slaves wash ivories in the sea, pile hides, and heap log-wood upon the sands, amongst sleek Brahminy bulls, pushing and butting by way of excitement. The younger blacks of both sexes bathe and disport themselves in an absence of costume which would astonish even Ramsgate. During this season the number of craft in port may average from sixty to seventy. They are anchored close inland, and are sometimes bumped to pieces from the wondrous apathy of their crews. The eye is first struck by the picturesque form of the "Mtepe," a lineal descendant from the Ploairia Khapta of the Periplus, which floated upon the seas two thousand years ago. This Lamu craft, with a beam one-third of its length, a thin mast that carries any amount of square matting, with a swan-necked prow, upon whose red head, as in Chinese junks, and in the ark of Egyptian Osiris, is painted a white circular eye, and with cowhoop and other talismans depending from its curved throat swims the tide buoyantly as a huge bird. The "mtepe" carries from fifteen to twenty tons, has not a nail in her, can go to windward of anything, never lies up for the monsoon, and by her breadth and elasticity can stand almost any amount of dancing upon sandbanks. The "Beden," from Sur, Shoar, and Maskat, discharges a load of Arab loafers. Having a boarded cabin, and being a fast sailer-she has accomplished eleven knots-this craft is preferred by passengers, and can carry, as Arabs travel, from eighty to one hundred men; on short trips, one per tone. At a distance, in hazy weather, her sail has often caused the Zanzibarites to fly their flags in hopes of news from home: nearer, the stern-post, rising above its overall, and the powerful rudder, like a shark's candal-fin, suggest the idea of a vast fish. The "Grab," a kind of overgrown "Dow," rigged bark-fashion, is, to appearance, wondrous couthless. Baghlas and Ganjas from Cutch, with low projecting bows, elevated and elaborately carved and painted sterns, some with masts struck, others ready to weigh anchor, split like giant's wedges the opposing waves. This stumbling craft, so dangerous in head-seas, is perpetuated only by popular prejudice for the antique. Add to these a variety of "dows," with immense outriggers on the stern, Battcas with poop-cabinets, open Matumbis and Machuas-gentle reader, I am not forwarding a report on Moslem naval architecture-and you have the outlines of the outlandish craft, withal interesting, that bethrongs the harbour of Zanzibar.

Outside these "country ships" lie some half-a-dozen French, Hamburg, and American square-rigged merchantmen, awaiting cargoes of copal and ivory, cowries and hides. The oft-puffed squadron of the late Sazzid flanks these peaceful traders, with its single and double bank of guns. There is a frigate, a jackass frigate, a corvette, a bark, and a brig; the number is imposing. But the masts are struck, and stripped for economy of rigging; the yards are fore and aft upon the booms; the crews consist of half-a-dozen thievish slaves, the live stock rats and cockroaches, the exterior dingy, and the internals foul. A single screw-steamer would have been more efficient in war, and far more useful in peace. It is difficult, however, to convince an Arab that number is not strength.

Our error in dealing with Orientals is always one and the same. If a man evinces signs of superiority, we push him hopelessly before and beyond his age. The late ruler of Zanzibar was probably as shrewd and enlightened a prince as Arabia ever produced, yet we overrated his powers. A beautiful model of a steam-engine was sent out from England; it was allowed to rust unopened in his stores. Like all Orientals, he was ever surrounded by an odious entourage, whome he consulted, trusted, and apparently preferred to his friends and well-wishers. He believed firmly in the African fetias, and in the Arabian Sahin's power of metamorphosis; ⁽³⁾ he would never flog a Mganga, or medicine man, nor cut down a "devil's tree." He sent for a Shaykh whose characts were celebrated, and fastened the paper with a silver nail to the doorway of Colonel Hamerton's sick-room, thereby excluding evil spirits and the ghost of Mr. Napier, who had died in the Consulate. He refused to sit for his portrait; even Colonel Smyth's History of Knight-errantry and Chivalrous Characters failed to temp him-for the European peasant's reason, it would take away part of his life. When "chivalry" was explained to him, he remarked that only the Siflah (low fellows) interfere between husband and wife. His favourite axiom-a fair text of a man's mind-was, that "Mullahs, women, and horses, never can be called good till death;" meaning, there is no knowing when they deceive. The Société Royal des Antiquaires du Nord sent him there diploma; he refused to belong to a body of gentlemen who robbed graves and snatched corpses. The census of Zanzibar being proposed to him, he took refuge with Allah from the sin of numbering his people. When tide-gauges were sent by the Geographical society of Bombay, he observed that "the Creator had bidden the ocean to ebb and flow-what else did man want to now about it?" Such was his incapability of understanding European affairs, that until death-day he believed Louis Philippe to have carried into exile, as he himself would have done, all the fleets and the public treasury of the realm. And, finally, he could never comprehend a republic-"who administered the stick?" Yet, peace to his soul! He was the model of arab princes; a firm friend to the English Nation and a great admirer of the "Malikat el Mazameh," our most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.

On the 20^th of December, riding through the surf, we landed, regretting that wealthy Zanzibar had not afforded herself the luxury of a T-shaped stone-pier. We were received by Colonel Hamerton with a true Irishman's welcome; and when the small mountain of luggage had been duly housed, we addressed ourselves seriously to the difficulties of our position. The report of our coming had preceded us. The Arabs were alarmed, and busy in conjecturing the objects with which the Frank was about to visit their copal coast, and explore their ivory lands: they knew that Europeans have coveted a possession upon the sea-board, and remembered nothing but evil results from the missionary visits to Fuga. The unworthy merchants at Zanzibar, American and European, did there best to secure for us the fate of M. Maizan, both on this and on a subsequent occasion, by spreading all manner of reports amongst the Banyans, Arabs, and Sawahilis. The Counsul, warned of this commotion by Kazi Muhiy el Din, the "celestial doctor" of the Sawahili, did not hesitate, when pressed by the Arab chiefs, to swear by the "Kalamat Ullah," that the expedition was wholly composed of English officers, and should have nothing in common with missionaries or Dutchmen, as these gentlemen from Germany are called by the Zanzibaris. Had Colonel Hamerton refused to gratify them, the course of events is clear to all who know this race. The surface of Arab civility would have been to appearance unruffled, but the under-current would have carried us off our legs. Considering the unfitness of the season, we were strongly advised to defer exploration of the interior until we had learned something of the coast, and for that prupose to set out at once for a two or three months' cruise. Persuaded by the Consul's earnestness, Sazzid Sulayman bin Hamid, popularly known as the "Bahary Mziry," or Sea of Milk-the Ethiopic equivalent for "soft sawder"-came forward in our favour. This old chief was governor of Zanzibar during the minority of Sazzid Khalid, the heir-apparent, who died in 1854, and his good word was strong upon the sea-board. He gave us curculars, to which the young Prince Majid added one, addressed to Sultan Kimwere of Usumbara, and another to the Diwans, or Sawabili Headmen, and to the Beloch Yemadars commanding the several garrisons. On the other hand, Ladha Damha of Mandavie, the Banyan Collector of Customs, provided us with orders upon the Hindu merchants to advance requisite moneys; without these, our reception would have been of the coolest.

If we, travellers in transit, had reason to be proud of our countryman's influence at Zanzibar, the European and American merchants should be truly thankful for it. Appointed in 1840 H.B.M.'s concul and H.E.I. Co.'s agent at the court of H. H. Sazzid Said and directed to make this island his headquarters, Colonel Hamerton found that for nine years not a British cruiser had visited it, and that report declared us to be no longer masters of the Indian seas. Slavery was rampant. Wretches were thrown overboard, when sick, to prevent paying duty; and the sea-beach before the town, as well as the plantations, presented horrible spectacles of dogs devouring human flesh. The consul's representations were accepted by Sazzid Said; certain dry floggins and confiscations of property instilled into slave-owners the semblance of humanity. The insolence of the negro was as summarily dealt eith. The Arabs had persuaded the Sawahilis and blacks that a white man is a being below contempt, and the "poor African" carried out the theory. Only seventeen years have elapsed since an American trader-consul, in consular cocked had and sword, was horsed upon a slave's back, and solemnly "bakured" in his own consular house, under his own consular flag. ⁽⁴⁾ A Sawahili would at any time enter the merchant's bureau, dispose his sandalled feet upon the table, call for cognac, and if refused, draw his dagger. Negro fishermen would anchor their craft close to a window, and clinging to the mast, enjoy the novel spectacle of Kafirs feeding. The Arabs jostled strangers in the streets, drove them from the centre, and forced them to pass by the left hand. At night none dared to carry a lantern, which would inevitably be broken; and a promenade in the dark usually caused insults, sometimes a bastinado. To such a pitch rose contempt for the white face, that even the "mild Hindoo"-our fellow subjects from Cutch and other parts of Western India-would not preserve with a European the appearance of civility. It required some time to uproot an evil made inveterate by mercantile tameness; patience and the Sazzid's goodwill, however, succeeded; and now an Englishman here is even more civilly treated than at one of our presidencies. This change is the work of Colonel Hamerton, who, in the strenuous and unremitting discharge of his duties, has lost youth, strength, and health. The iron constitution of this valuable public servant-I have quoted merely a specimen of his worth-has been undermined by the terrible fever, and at fifty his head bears the "blossoms of the grave," as though it had seen its seventieth summer.

Before we could set out a guide was requisite: this necessary was provided for us by the Sea of Milk. Said bin Salim el Lamki, the companion of our way for many a weary mile, well deserves the honour of a sketch. He is a diminutive arab, short, thin, and delicate, a kind of man for the pocket, forty years old, with a yellow skin, weak and promiment eyes, and a long nose like a young bird, loose lips, regular teeth, dyed by betel to the crimson of chessmen, almost beardless, and scantily mustachioed. Of noble family, the Beni Lamk of the Hinawi, his father salim had been governor of Kilwa (Quiloa), and he himself commanded at the little port Saadan. Yet had dignity not invested him with the externals of authority. He says "Karrib," (draw nigh!) To simple and gentle. He cannot beat his naughty bondsmen, though be perpetually quotes-

"Buy thou not the slave but with staff in hand,
"Or the lord will slave, and the slave command;"

and though I have heard him address with "rotund mouth" the small boy Faraj, he is mostly ashamed to scold. This results from extreme nervousness and timidity. Though he never appears without a dagger, and a two-handled blade fit for the Richard of England, he will sleep in an oven rather than open the door after hearing of a leopard. On board ship he groans like a colicky patient at every blast, and a sea shipped brings the squeak of mortal agony involuntarily from his lips. In the hour of safety he has a certain mild valour, which is exceeding likely to impose. He cannot bear fatigue, hunger, or thirst, and until fate threw him in our way, probably never walked one consecutive mile. Though owner of a wife and three assistant wives, he was refused by Allah the gift of increase and multiplication. Possibly the glad tidings that a slave-girl was likely to make him a father, suddenly communicated on his return from the cruise, made him judge our companionship canny, and resolve once more to link his destiny with the Frank.

Said bin Salim is a Bayazi of the Kharijite schism; he prays regularly, fasts uncompromisingly, chews, but will not smoke tobacco, never casts away a date-stone, and "sips water," but "swills milk," as the Arab proverb directs. His mother-tongue is the Lingua Franca called Ki-Sawahili; he speaks the vile Arabic of Oman, but sometimes, to display the humanities, he mixes up hashed Koran and terminating vowels with Maskat "baragouinage"-Paradise Lost and thieves' Latin. He has read Syntax, writes a pretty hand, is great at epiatles, and loves to garnish discourse with saw and song. When in the "doldrums" he will exclaim:--

"The grave's the gate all flesh must pass,--
Ah! Would I know what lies behind!"

I have heard him crooning for long hours,

"The knowledge of this nether world,
say, friend, what is it?-false or true?
The false what mortal came to know?--
The trugh what mortal ever knew?"

Sometimes he will break out into rather a "fast" strain-

"At Mecca I saw the lass solling perfume;
She put forth her hand and cried, 'O sweet!' {Three snuffs crescendo.}
She leans over me, casting a glance of lore;
But from Mecca I sped, saying 'Farewell, sweet!" {Three Kafir-clicks diminucndo, signifying "no go".}

The reader asks, What induced us to take a guide apparently so little fit for rough-and-ready work? In the frist place, the presence of Said bin Salim el Lamki was a pledge of respectability. Secondly, our companion had a well-filled knowledge-box, and was no churl in imparting its contents. Thirdly, he was courteous, thoroughly good-tempered, generous, and kind-hearted. And, lastley, a bright exception to the rule of his unconscientious race, he appeared truthful, honest, and honourable. I have never yet had reason to suspect him of a low action. This rare and solid merit determined us to attach him, and when we communicated to him the resolution, "Verily," was the reply, "whoso benefiteth the beneficent becometh his lord, but the vile well treated turneth and rendeth the." I almost hope that he may not deceive us in the end.

On the evening of the 5^th January 1857, Captain S----- and I shook hands with our host and kind friend, and found ourselves on board the Riami, an Arab "Beden," hired for our coasting cruise, and stored with necessaries for two months by Ladha, the collector of custome. ⁽⁵⁾ Our Nakhoda, Hamid-never was brain of goose or heart of hen-partridge hidden by brow so broad and intellectual, and by beard so fierce and bushy-belonged to that Suri race, the self-called descendants of Syrians, well known for beggary and covetousness, for kidnapping and safe piracy. These man, most uncourteous and vilest of the Arabs, would address even their prince, "O Said!" and though ever demanding El Hashmah, or respect for themselves, will on no occasion accord it to others.

It were vain to describe how, after we had been peremptorily summoned on board, our gallant captain eclipsed himself in quest of two sailors who had absconded-how he had forgotten to lay in stores of wood and water-how he did not come home till morning, when, making sail, he ran down to Mtony, and there wasted twenty-four hours-how he again went shore promising to return in half and hour, but leaving us to spend the day in vain expectation-how Said bin Salim solaced himself by wishing that the Shaytan might appear to Hamid on his deathbed, and say, "O friend of my soul, welcome home!"-how he reappeared with half-a-dozen fellows mostly Suris culled from the bazar, one maimed , another a stammerer, a third sick, a fourth malingering, No. 5 a tailor, and No. 6 a diminutive Somali boy-how he was greeted by me with a flea in his ear and the threat of Bakur, and by Said bin Salim with a cup of coffee and a proverb, importing that out of woe cometh weal-and, finally, how, after a clear loss of two nights and a day, we drew up our ground-tackle and went our way. Orientals notably want the principle of immediate action. The traveller in Eastern Africa must ever be prepared for three distinct departures-the little start, the great start, and the start.

Our old tub, with knees and mast loose like a slaver, soon reached the usual point of departure, Kokotony Bay-"in the pebbles"-a roadstead with the usual trimmings of mangrove and manioc, lime and orange, superb mangoes and cocos waving in the clear sea-breeze. Clove plantations adorn the little hills, and the giant calabash stretches its stumpy crooked arms over the clustering huts. This tree is at once majestic and grotesque; the tall conical bole of spongy and porous wood, covered with a soft gloss rind at the base, will have a girth of forty or fifty feet, and bear from five hundred to six hundred gourds. Arbutus-like, in the same season some trees will be bare, others in leaf, in flower, or in fruit. When thickly clothed with foliage growing almost stalkless from the wood, topped with snowy flowers like the fairest of water-lilies, and hung about with ovals here somewhat larger than a coco-nut, covered with a green velvet, and attached by a long thin cord, its appearance is striking as it is novel.

On the 10^th of January we ran through the paradise of verdant banks and plateaus forming the approach to Pemba, and halted a day to admire the Emerald Isle of these Eastern seas. In A.D. 1698, the bold buccaneer Captain Kidd buried there his blood-stained hoards of precious stones and metal, the plunder of India and the further Orient. The people of Pemba have found pots full of gold lumps, probably moulded from buttons that the pirate might wear his wealth. Thus it is that the modern skipper, landing at Madagascar or other robber haunts of the olden time, still frequently witnesses the disappearance of his brass buttons, whilst the edge of a knife resting upon his throat secures the quiescence essential to the rapid performance of the operation. Landing at Chakchak, the principal harbour, we inspected the town and sketched the fort, an old building, vain and picturesque as any restored castle on the Rhine.

Our gallant captain of the beard-"the Lord have mercy on him for a hen!"-determined to doze away the day, and at night to sleep soundly, anchored in some quiet bay. On this latter point we differed. Yet when running out of Pemba, grave doubts regarding my own wisdom suggested themselves as the moonless night fell like a pall and, exaggerated by the dim twinkling of the stars, rose within biscuit toss the silhouettes of island and plateau, whence proceeded the threatening sounds of a wash. Presently, however, emerging from the reefs, we smelt sea-air, and felt with pleasure the long throb of the Indian Ocean. Our progress northwards was made under difficulties. Rain fell almost daily; the wind was high and contrary, the sea wild and stormy; a strong current set dead against us; the lee-shore, within a few yards of which we were periodically drifted, was steep, too, with coralline rocks and bars; and if all was unpleasant outside the Raimi, the interior, with its atmosphere of cockroaches, bilg-water, and rotting wood, was scarcely more attractive. On the 16^th January, after beating about for three days in sight of the conical Humocks, called by the Portuguese Corva de Mombassa, and when almost despairing of reaching them, we were driven by a fair puff round Ras Betany into the land-locked harbour. Our reception at Mombas was characteristic of Africa. The men hailed us from afar with the query, "What news?" We were unmercifully derided by black nymphs bathing in the costume of the Nereids. And the sable imps upon the sands shouted the free-and-easy "Mzungu!"-white man!

Chapter III.-Mombas.

"Here reigned a hoary king of ancient fame,
Mombaze the down, Mombaze the island's name"-Micklh's Lusiad.

From the earliest ages the people of this inhospitable coast left untried neither force nor fraud, no secret treachery nor open hostility, to hinder and deter Europeans from exploration. Bribed by the white and black Moors, the Arabs and Sawahili, then monopolists of the interior trade, Vasco de Gama's pilots attempted to wreck his ships. In later years the Banyans, not chief merchants of the coast, have excited against us the half-cast maritime races-as usual, the worst specimens of population-and their neighbours, the sangninary savages, who, in addition to their natural fear of our complexion, have preserved in verse and song a "reivayat," or prophecy, that sovereignty shall depart from them when the Frank's first footstep has defiled the soil. In 1826, the brig "Mary Anne" was assaulted near Berberah, and some of her crew were murdered by the Somal, according to Lieut. Wellsted, ⁽⁶⁾ at the instigation of the Banyans, who certainly withheld all information by which the attack could have been prevented or repelled. In 1844, a combination secretly headed by yayaram, the collector of customs at Zanzibar, so effectually opposed Colonel Hamerton, that, unable to procure a vessel on the island, he crossed over to the mainland with his own boat's crew in a launch borrowed from the Prince. Now, however, the number of the European merchants, the increasing power of the Sazzid, and the presence of our ships in these ports, have convinced Arabs, Banyans, and Sawahilis that it is vain for them to kick against the pricks in European shape. Yet they yield unwillingly, knowing that by the advance of our interests their monopoly will be diverted into another channel. At present, fortune-favoured travellers may perhaps enter the country, but they should consider the countenance of the Sazzid's government a sin quâ non, and never, unless marching in great force, or prepared to bribe in all directions, make any port distant from headquarters their starting-point.

The town of Mombas is mentioned in 1330 by the Shaykh Ibn Batutah as a large place abounding in fruits, and peopled by a chaste, honest, and religious race. Two centuries afterwards it is thus described by the "Colto e boun Luigi," as Camoens is called by the amiable Tasso. In these days of general knowledge I forbear translation.

"Estava a ilha a terra ta o chegada
Que humo estreito pequeno a dividin.
Huma cidade nella situada
Que na fronte de mar apparecia.
De nobres edificios fabricada
Como por fora ao longe des cobria-
Regida por hum Rei de antigua idade
Mombaca he o nome da ilha eda cudade."

We read also attractive details of beautiful gardens, lofty towers, a harbour full of ships; of handsome men and of honourable women, in silk robes, adorned with gold and jewels; "the horsemen of Mombas," which now barely contains an ass; and the "ladies of Melinde," at present a heap of ruins. The venerable monarch received Vasco de Gama with peculiar attention, and, with the benevolent purpose of cutting his throat, enticed him to land by samples of pepper, ginger, and cloves, ⁽⁷⁾ apparently all imports and promises to furnish wax, wheat, ambergris, ivory, and precious metals. When the general's ship weighed anchor to enter Mombas, she struck upon a shoal, probably the reef off Ras Betany. The "Moors" tumbled into their canoes, the Mozambique pilot plunged from the ship's stern, and an ugly treason stood froth in its nakedness. To make certain, de Gama of the "awful eyes" obtained confession from his Moslem captives by "heating bacon, and dropping it upon their flesh." ⁽⁸⁾ Unable, however, to revenge himself, he set sail for Melinde.

In A.D. 1500 Mombas yielded to D. Alvarez Cabral; in 1503, D. Roderigo Ravasco settled its tribute; and two years afterwards- events succeeded one another rapidly in those dear old days-it was attacked, captured, and garrisoned by the first viceroy of India, D. Francesco d'Almeyda, a venerable who had been gravely insulted by its turbulent citizens. A fort was built, stringent regulations were made, and in 1508 the conquest was placed in the first of the three provinces of Ethiopia and Arabia. The government of the general capital, Mozambique, was confided by the king to D. Duarte de Lemos.

The Portuguese were now masters of the principal ports and positions in a coast two thousand miles long. Contrary to received opinion, tradition declares that they penetrated far into the interior, and it is not probable that soldiers so adventurous would confine themselves to the sea-board. The Sawahilis speak of a ruined castle on 'Njuira, a hill north of the Pangany river, and placed by M. Rebmann 160 miles from the ocean. On the heights of Chhaga ⁽⁹⁾ (the mountain region whose apex is the much-vexed Kilimanjaro), stone walls, a breastwork for canon, and an image of a long-haired woman seated in a chair and holding a child, are reported to remain. The Wanika or desert people of the Mombas hills have preserved at Rabai Mku, in one of the strong holds called a "Kaya," certain images which they declare came from the West; and iconolatry being here unknown, ⁽¹⁰⁾ the savages must have derived them from some more civilised race. According to Dr. Kraff, the statuettes are called Kisukas, or little devils, and carried in war-procession to encourage the combatants. No European, however, has seen this great medicine; the chief never dared even to propose showing them to a missionary; and whenever a individual evinced more persistency than was pleasing, he found every bush upon his path bristling with bows and spear, and capped by the wool mop of some sable Roderick Dhu's clansmen.

On the 9^th of Jemadi el Akhir, A.H. 1110 (A.D. 1698)-the date is celebrated in many ballads-the Mazrui, a noble Arab tribe and the dependent Sawahilis, emboldened by the squadron of Sayf bin Malih el Yurabi, Imanm of Oman, massacred the European masters of mombas. They continued quasi-independent, sending occasional presents to the Ayzal Bú Said, the present dynasty of Muskat, till 1823 or 1824, when they placed themselves under British protection in their rebellion against the late Sazzid. They were permitted to fly our flag-a favour for which, when danger disappeared, they proved themselves ungrateful; and a Mr. Reece ⁽¹¹⁾ was placed at Mombas to watch its interests. Sazzid Said, however, who showed a kind of title to the town, was permitted to attack it; and in 1837, after two seasons of desultory warfare, he succeeded. Rashid bin Salim, chief of the Mazrui, accompanied by twenty-six kinsmen, was enticed on board the Sazzid's ship by an oath and a sealed Koran. He fell into the trap-it is wonderful how liar trusts liar-and the vessel at once stood for Maskat. The chiefs spent the remnant of their days at hormuz, and the power of the Mazrui was for ever destroyed. The traveller laments that we abandoned Mombas: had England retained it, the whole interior would now be open to us. But such is the history of Britain the Great: hard won by blood and gold, her conquests are parted with for a song.

Mombas is built upon one of those small coralline islands, which, from Ras Hafun to Cape Corrientes, form the centres of commerce with a coast whose people, brutalised by slavery and incapable of civilisation, would have converted mainland depots into dens of rapine and bloodshed. Of this chain the principal links are Masawwah, Old Zayla, Berberah (in the sixteenth century an islet), Lamu, Wasin, ancient Tanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafiyeh (by us called Monfia), the original Kilwa, and Mozambique. Mombas island is an irregular oval, about three miles long by two and a half in breath; a meeres arm, or narrow channel of coralline and oyster rock, separates it on every side from the coast. Behind lies a deep land-locked basin, called by Captain Owen "Port Tudor," and westward, one similar, "Port Reitz." Vessels generally lie under the town opposite English Point on the mainland, and near a wharf made by Lieutenant Emery in 1825. The harbour is snug; in the south-west monsoon, however, square-rigged ships must be warped out, and in so doing they run the greatest risk of a wreck.

Of the Portuguese at Mombas the only traces are ruins of desecrated churches, some old wells of good masonry, still supplying the best water, and a large fort well placed to command the engrance: standing full to the bay, and detached from the town, if provided with a few batteries a fleur d'eau, it would soon dispose of Arab assailants. The picturesque yellow pile, with tall, long, and buttressed curtains, enclosing towers streaked with perpendicular loopholes, high donjons, trees, and little domes, was undergoing repair at the time of our visit; not being authorised to enter by the Prince, I can describe only its exterior.

The town is an array of brown cadjan huts, with a few glaring piles of coralline and lime, surrounded by a tumbling enceinte; the position is a diminutive rise at the eastern and seaward edge of the island. Landing at a natural jetty, where the marks of cannon-balls show the old position of a battery, you ascend the cliff by a flight of steps in a dark dwarf-tunnel, the labour of your countrymen. Above, it opens upon the Mission-house, a double-storied pile of coarse masonry; to the right and left are others more or less dilapidated, and the east point of the town is occupied by a small custom-house painfully whitewashed. The wind-blackened sun-burnt hut stands far beyond the enceinte, and outside this suburb, the country-ti served for skirmishing-ground during the wars is a bushy plantation of coco and fruit trees. On the mainland, separated by a pure blue channel, verdure and orchards face the town. Mombas is, as far as Nature made her, pleasing and picturesque.

The climate of this islet is hotter and healthier than Zanzibar. The people suffer a little from the fever, which renders it so dangerous for us. The endemic complaint is an ulcer upon the legs, and parts most distant from the seat of circulation. As in Yemen and in the Hejaz, here the least scratch becomes an ugly wound. The cause may be sought in that cachectic and seorbutie habit induced by the want of vegetables, and by brackish water. The pure element is indeed to be found in the old wells beyond the town, and on the mainland; the citizens, however, to save trouble, prefer the neared pits, where water penetrates through briny coralline.

The population, including a Beloch garrison rater at 300 men, may amount to 8000 souls; of these there are 25 or 30 Indian Moslems, and nearly 50 Bhattias. We found unexpectedly-the Mombas mission was well received-by no means friendly inclinations. Small communities are rarely remarkable for amiability or morality. These people are taxed by other Arabs with overweening pride, insolence of manner, bigotry and evil-speaking, turbulence and treachery. Their habits of pilfering are inveterate; few travellers have failed to miss some valuable. All seemed to regard us as rivals and enemies. They devoted energy to the task of spoiling us, and, that failing, they tried insolence. I was obliged on one occasion to administer sword in hand, the descent down-stairs. The terrors of the interior and the expense of travelling were studiously exaggerated. Tangai the Jemadar, a quaint old Mekrani, who, unable to read or write, was renowned for "ak!"-intellect, synonymous with knavery-did nothing but beg our guns and revolvers. His son would have been contented with a little cloth, powder and a gold chronometer. "Yabir," a chief so powerful, that men spoke his name in an undertone, almost merited, and narrowly escaped, being lead out of the room by his ears. The very Hindus required a lesson in civility. With the Wali or Governor, Khalfan bin Ali, an Omani arab of noble family, we were on the best of terms. But the manifest animus of the public made us feel light-hearted, when, our inquiries concluded, we bade adieu to Mombas.

Leaving orders with Lakhimidan, the Banyan collector of customs, to land and lodge our cockroach-gnawed luggage, and directing Said bin Salim, supported by our two Portuguese servants and his three slaves, to protect it, Captain S----- and I set out on the morning after our arrival to visit the Rev. Mr. Rebmann of the Mombas mission at Kisulodiny, his station. Before the sun had power to destroy the dewy freshness of dawn, we slowly punted up the river-like creek bounding the islet eastward, and in our heavy "dow'-here all small craft are so called-manned by two men and a boy, we justified stern Omar's base comparison for those who tempt the sea, "worms floating upon a log." Whilst rounding the islet, our attention was attracted by groups of market-people, who called to be ferried across. The acknowledgment on our crew's part was an African modification of Marlow Bridge and its infamous pie. Sundry small settlements, bosomed in trees and bush mixed with brabs, cocos, and the W-shaped toddy, appeared upon each "adverse strand." After two miles' progress, lame as the march of African civilisation, appeared Port Tudor, a salt-water lagoon north of and behind Mombas. Its broad surface, broken only by the Rock of Rats, and hedged on both sides by the water-loving mangrove, prolongs itself in two river-like arma towards the interior, till stopped by high ground. Such in nature is the original of the "Tuaca, or Nash," with which our mappers enliven dull tracts of desert. Here, like the "Great Quiloa River," a salt-water inlet, receiving in the dry season a slender runnel, and during rain the surface-drainage of a seaward slope, becomes a noble black streak, dispensing the blessings of commerce and civilisation throughout three inches of white paper.

As we advanced up the "Water of Rabai," the sea-arms shrank and the scenery brightened. A broken blue line of well-wooded hills-the Rabai Range-formed the background. On the nearer slopes westward were the beginnings of plantations: knots of peasants' huts hove successively in sight, and pale smoke, showing that the land is being prepared for approaching showers, curled high from field and fell. Above was the normal mottled sky of the rainy zone, fleecy mists, opal-tinted, floating upon azure depths; and from the western horizon a purple nimbus moved majestically against the wind. Below, the water caught various and varying reflections of the firmament; in places it was smooth as glass, and sometimes dimpled by the zephyrs that found a way through the hill-gaps, and merrily danced over the glistening floor. Here little fishes, pursued by some tyrant of the waters, played duck-and-drake upon the surface; there larger kinds, skate-shaped, sprang nineteen or twenty feet into the air, glittering like plates of silver in the sun. On both sides the view was bounded by veritable forests of the sea. The white and the red mangrove on firmer ground rose unsupported; on the water's edge they were propped like miniature banyan-trees by succulent offsets of luscious purple and emerald green, so intricate that the eye would vainly unravel the web of root and trunk, of branch and shoot. The parasitical oyster clustered to the portions denuded by the receding tide, whilst the brown newt and the rainbow crab with single claw plunged into their little hiding-holes, or ran amongst the garrow-work of roots and upshoots binding the black mass of ooze. These "green and superb, thought unfruitful trees," of the old Portuguese navigator, supply the well-known Zanzibar rafters. Various lichens, especially the orchilla, grow upon the fork. Here and there towered a nodding cuco, a silk-cotton tree, or the "Plam," with noble shaft and canopied head of green, glinted through by golden beans. White and brown fish-hawks soared high in ether; lower down, bright fly-catchers hunted in concert the yellow butterflies rashly travelling from bank to bank; doves cooed in the thicker foliage; snowy paddy-birds perched upon the topmost tree-boughs, and over the shoal-water lining the sides; the small grey Kingfisher poised himself with twinkling wings; while sober-coated curlews and sand-pipers took runs, and stopped to peck into the dark vegetable mud.

After ten miles of alternate rowing, sailing and pulling through pelting rain and potent sun, we reached about mid-day the landing-place, a tree projecting from the right bank over the mud graves of many defunct mangroves. Our boat, stripped of sail, oars, and rudder, to secure her presence next morning, was made fast to a stump, and we proceeded to breast the hills. A footpath lead us over rolling ground sliced by the heavy rains, thickly grown with tall coarse grass, sun-scorched to a sickly bawny brown, and thinly sprinkled with thorny aeacias. After a mile we began the ascent of the Rabai Range. Rising behind the coralline of the coast, this ridge of yellow or rufous sandstone and red ochreish clay, varying in height from 700 to 1200 feet, fringes the line from Melinde to the Pangany river. The hills rise abruptly seaward, and fall inland with a somewhat gentler slope, thus forming a mere ridge, not as such maritime ranges usually are, the rampart of an interior plateau. This unusual disposition may have led to the opinion that inland the country falls to or below sea-level. ⁽¹²⁾ The chine is broken by deep ravines, which, after rains, pour torrents to the ocean. Despite the blighting salt-breeze, aricas and cocos, mangoes and custard apples, the guava and the castor plant, the feathery cassava and the broad-leaved papaw and plantain, flourish upon its flanks; and in the patches of black forests spared by the wild woodman, the copal and the invule, a majestic timber-tree, still linger. The ascent of the hills was short but sharp, and the way, checkered with boulders, wound at imes under clumps of palms and grateful shade. On the summit appeared the straggling huts of the savages, pent-housed sheds of dried fronds, surrounded by sparse cultivation, lean cattle, and vegetation drooping for want of rain. Amid cries of "Yambo?" especially from that part of the sable community termed by prescriptive right the fair, and the screams of children, we pursued our road over seaward ridge and dell: at the end of a five-mile walk we entered the mission-house, introduced ourselves to the inmates, and received the most hospitable welcome.

The Kisulodiny mission-house struck us as a miracle of industry in these lands. Begun in 1850 by Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt, it was finished after about two years. The form is in three sides of a hollow square, completed with a railing to keep poultry from vagrancy, and a flat roof is ascended by an external ladder: the material is sandstone plastered with clay and whitewashed; mangrove rafters form the ceiling, and Invule-planks the doors and shutters. It has its inconveniences, being distant from that source of all comfort, the well, and beplagued with ants. The little red wretches are ubiquitous by day, overrunning the clothes, nestling in the hair, and exploring nose and ears, and never resting by night, compel the inmates to sleep with pans full of water supporting the bed-legs. We enjoyed the cool refreshing evening, which, unlike Zanzibar, here follows a shower. The servants, most grotesque in garb and form, collected to stare at the new white men; and those hill-savages who were brave enough to enter a house-your true African has a lively horror of stone walls-stalked about, and stopped occasionally to relieve their minds by begging snuff or cloth. Considering the intense desire of civilisation to know something of man in his state of nature, I proceed, with the aid of Mr. Redmann, who during nine years has made a conscientious study of these races, and who imparted it with the greatest courtesy, to sketch the two typical tribes.

The people of Eastern Intertropical Africa are divided by their occupations into three orders. First is the fierce pastoral nomade, the Galla and Masai, the Somal and the Kafir, who lives upon the produce of his cattle, the chase, and the foray. He is the constant terror of the neighbouring races. Secondly rank the semi-pastoral as the wakamba, who, without fixed abodes make their women cultivate the ground. They occasionally indulge in raids and feuds. And the last degree of civilisation, agriculture, is peculiar to the Wanka, the Wasumbara, and the various tribes living between the coast and the interior lakes. This third order is peaceful with strangers but thievish, and fond of intestine strife.

The Wanika ⁽¹³⁾ or Desert race in compose of a Negritic base, now intimately iced with Semitic blood. Of old Mulattoes, the antiquity of these East African families has enabled them to throw off the variety and irregularity of half-casts. Receiving for ages distinct impresses of physical agents, they have settled down into several and uniform national types. Many considerations argue them rather a degeneracy from civilised man, than a people advancing towards improvement; and linguistic reasons induce belief in the consanguinity of all the African races south of the equator, and an ancient subjection to the great Ethiopian or Kushite empire. The historian of these lands, however, has to grope through the shades of the past, guided only by the power to avail himself of the dimmest present lights.

Physiologically, the Wanika are not an inferior African race. The features are Negritie only from the eyes downwards. Like the Galla and the Somal, the skull is pyramido-oval, flattened at the moral region of the phrenologist, and compressed at the sides. The face is somewhat broad and plane, with highly-developed zygomata; the brow is moderately conical, high and broad; the orbits wide and distant; the nose depressed with patulated nostrils; the lips bordes, fleshy and swelling; the jaw prognathous, and the beard scant. The Mnika's hair, which grows long and wiry, is shaved off the forehead from ear to ear, and hangs down in the thinnest of corkscrews, stiffened with fat. His complexion is chocolate-brown, seldom black, unless the mother be a slave from the south. The skin is soft, but the effluvium truly African. His figure is, like his features, Semitic above and Negritic below. The head is well seated upon broad shoulders; the chest is ample; the stomach, except in early boyhood or age, does not protrude, and there is little steatopyga. But the lean calf is placed high, the shank bows forward, and the foot is large, flat, and "lark-heeled." The gait-no two natives walk exactly alike- is half-stride, half-lounge; and the favourite standing position is crow-legged. Eyes wild and staring, abrupt gestures, harsh, loud, and barking voices, evidence the savage. Nothing is more remarkable in the women than the contrast between face and form. Upon the lower limbs, especially the haunches, of the Medician Venus, a hideous wrinkled face meets the disappointed eye.

The Wanika are a curious study of rudimental mind. In some points a nation of semi-naturals, all with them is confusion. To the incapacity of childhood they unite the hard-headedness of age. With the germs of the ideas that belong to a Bacon or a Shakespeare, they combine incapability of developing them. Their religion is that of "gentily worshipping nothing," yet feeling instinctively something above them-a Fetiss-system of demonolatry, and the ghost-faith common to africans; in fact, the vain terrors of our childhood rudely systamatised. Thus they have neither god nor devil, nor heaven nor hell, nor soul nor idol. "Mulungu," the word applied, like the Kafir Uhlunga, to the Supreme, also denotes any good or evil revenant. They offer sheep, goats, poultry, and palm-wine upon the tombs of their ancestors, ⁽¹⁴⁾ but they cannot comprehend a futurity. They fear the Koma or Evestrum: etymologically it means "one departed;"-but they say of the ded, Yuri sira-"be is finished." Thus believing, with our philosophers, the Koma to be a subjective, not an objective existence, ghost craft is still the only article of their idiotic creed. All their diseases arise from possession. They have evil ghosts, and haunters of both faiths-the Mulungu is the Pagan's, the Phaypo is the Moslem's departed spirit. Their rites are intended either to avert evils from themselves, or to cast them upon others, and the primal cause of their sacrifices is the Mganga or medicine-man's self-interest. When the critical moment has arrived, the ghost is adjured to come forth from the possessed; and he names some article in which, if worn round the neck or lims, he will reside without annoyance to the wearer. This idea lies at the bottom of many practices. It is the object of the leopard's claw, the strings of white, black, and blue beads worn over the shoulder and called Mudugu ga mulungu, (ghost-beads), and the rags taken from the sick man's body, and nailed to what Europeans call the "Devil's tree"-termed technically a kehi, or chair. This article is preferred by the ghost or demon to the patient, and thus, by mutual agreement, both are happy. Some people, especially women, are haunted by a dozen revenauts, each of which has a peculiar charm and name. One of them is ridiculously enough called Barakat-in Arabic, a blessing.

It has not suited the Moslem's purpose to proselytise the Wanika, who doubtless would have adopted the saving faith like their brethren the Somal. As it is, the Toruma clan has been partly converted, and many of the heathen fast like Mohammedans, feeling themselves raised in the scale of creation by doing something. Their ceremonies are the simple contrivances of savage priestcraft. Births are not celebrated, and the new-born infant is strangled if weakly or deformed. Children become the mother's, or rather her brother's property, to be disposed of as he pleases. Circumcision, partially practised by the gentile throughout East Africa from Egypt to the Cape, is a semi-religious act, performed once every five or six years upon the youths en masse, and accompanied by the usual eating and drinking, drumming and dancing. A man may marry any number of wives; the genial rite-no tie, however, to these fickle sonls-is celebrated by jollifications, and broken at leisure. The principal festivities, if they can be so called, are at funerals. The object is as the people say, Ussa kiwewe, to "break the fear" of death-an event which, savage-like, they regard with inexpressible horror. For a whole week the relations of the deceased must abstain from business, however urgent, and, under pain of insult and a heavy fine, ruin themselves by killing cattle and broaching palm-wine for the community. At these times also there is a lazity of manners which recalls to mind the abominations of the classical adonia. The characteristic of their customs is the division of both sexes, with initiatory rites resembling masonic degrees. The orders are three in number ⁽¹⁵⁾-Nyere, the young; Khambi, the middle-aged; and Mfaya, the old. Each has its different initiation and ceremonies, the principal of which is, that the junior must purchase promotion from the senior order. Once about every twenty years happens the great festival Unyaro, at which the middle-aged degree is conferred upon men from thirty down to years of childhood. The candidates retire to the woods for a fortnight, during the first half claying themselves with white, during the second with red earth. On this occasion a slave is sacrificed, and the ceremony is performed with a number of mysterious rites concerning which I could learn nothing. This year the Unyaro was to occur; the arrival of the Masai prevented the rite. When all the Khambi have been raised to the highest order, Mfaya, these, formerly the elders, return literally to a second childhood. They are once more Nyere (old boys), and there is no future promotion for them. After the bloody sacrifice and coatings of clay, these orders are mainly distinguished by their religious utensils: for instance, the Miansa, or huge drum, a goat-skin stretched upon a hollowed tree-trunk, six feet long, whose hollow prolonged sounds, heard at night from the depths of distant hills, resemble a melancholy moan, is peculiar to the third degree, or elders. It is brought back dark to the Kaya, that the junior orders may not look upon it. Similarly, the women have earthenware drums, which are concealed from the men.

Langour and apathy are the gifts of the climate; moreover, man in these lands, wanting little, works little. Two great bodies, indeed, seem everywhere to make of life one long holiday-the civilised rich, who have all things; and the savage who possesses little or nothing. Yet are the Wanika, and indeed all wild men, greedy of gain-perfectly dishonest in quest of lucre, and not to be bound by agreement or oath. Like all nations in this part of Africa, they are essentially and instinctively thieves. They never go to war. Argiculture and settled life have enervated them, without supplying superior knowledge. They scratch the ground with small hoes-wander about with their few goats and cows-sit in the sun, and spend hours squatting round an old well whilst water collects, rather than dig a pit or dam a ravine. They thus labour three days, and rest on the fourth, called Yuna, from Yuma, the Moslem Sabbath: this is their only idea of weeks. Their time is principally passed in intoxication, by means of thembu, or palm-wine. The drum scarcely ever ceases; as amongst the Sawahili, it sounds at all times, seasons, and occasions. The music is simple: they are contented to recite, for the livelong night such merum nectar as

"Kitósí múlláni káká." ⁽¹⁶⁾

The policy of the Wanika is the rude and lawless equality of Bushmen. None commands where none obeys; consequently there is no combination, no improvement. The chief plies his hoe like the serf; and even to protect life, men will not unite. Causes are decided according to the great African code, ancient custom, by a council of elders. Adultery is punished by the fine of a cow; the murderer is more generally muleted than slain. Little is said concerning the death of a slave, and a man found pilfering is chastised by the proprietor with sword or arrow. The tribe is divided into half-a-dozen clans, each in number perhaps sufficient to stock a small European town. Petty political jealousies and dissensions are as necessary to these savages as to the highly civilised.

The Wanika are an anomaly in mental gifts. With time and tune well developed, they easily learned music from the missionaries; but they ever prefer their own meaningless recitative. At first they attended the schools; presently, with their usual laxity and levity, growing weary of application, they dubbed all who exerted themselves Waringu, or fools. They possess in a high degree the gift of most African races, an unstudied eloquence. Their unpremeditated speech rolls like the torrent; every limb takes its part in the work of persuasion, and the peculiar rhythm of their dialect is favourable to such displays of oratory. Few, however, can "follow the words"-that is to say, answer the heads of an opponent's speech. Such power of memory and logical faculity are not in them. The abuse of the gift of language makes them boisterous in conversation, unable to keep silence-the negro race is ever loquacions-and to "bend their tongue like their bows for lies." They cannot even, to use a Zanzibar German merchant's phrase, "lie honestly." Their character may thus be briefly summed up: a futile race of degraded men, drunken, destructive, cowardly, boisterous, immoral, indolent, and improvident. Their redeeming points are a tender love of family, which displays itself by violent "kin-grief," and a string attachment to an uninviting home. ⁽¹⁷⁾

The men's dress is a tanned skin or a cotton cloth tied round the waist; strips of hairy cowhide are bound like garters below the knee, and ostrich and other feathers are stuck in the tufty poll. Their ornaments are earrings of brass or iron wire, and small brass chains; around their necks and shoulders, arms and ankles, hang beads, talisman-case, and "ghost-chairs"-generally some article difficult to obtain, like a leopard's claw. They now rarely tattoo, saying, "Why should we spoil our bodies?" This ornament is abandoned to women, who raise the skin with a long sharp thorn, prick it with a knife, and wash the wounds with ochre and water. Abroad, the Mnika carries his bow, and long hide quiver full of reed arrows, tipped with wood or iron, and poisoned by means of some bulbous root: the citizens of Mombas have wisely prohibited the sale of guns. He has also a spear, a knofe at his waist for cutting coco-nuts, a Rungu or knob-stick in his girdle behind, and a long sword rudely imitating the straight Omani blade, half-sheathed, and sharpened near the point. On journeys he slings to his back a three-knobbed stool of solid wood ⁽¹⁸⁾-sitting on the bare ground is supposed to cause dysentery; he hangs round his neck a gourd sneeze-mull, containing powdered tobacco, with fragrant herbs and the dried heart of plantain; and he holds a long thin staff surmounted by a little cross, which served to churn his blood-and-milk. ⁽¹⁹⁾ The wife's tiolette is as simple-a skin or cloth round the loins, another veiling the bosom, and, in some cases, a Márindá or broad lap of woven beads, like the Coëoo of Guiana, falling in front, and displaying a broader tail behind. A flat disk of thick brass wire adorns her throat, making the head appear as in a platter; white and pink beads, or the scarlet beans of the abrus, form her earrings and necklaces, bracelets and anklets; and a polished coil of brass wire wound round a few inches of the leg below the knee, sets off the magnificent proportions of the limb. Young girls wear long hair, and "the bold bairn takes his bow" and arrows before thinking of a waist-cloth.

The Wanika are a slave-importing people. They prefer the darker women of the south to their own wives. Children are sold, as in India, only where famine compels, and all have the usual hatred of slave-merchants. "When that enlightened Arab statesman, H. E. Ali bin Nasir, H. H. the Imaum of Muscat's Envoy Extraordinary to H. B. Majesty," was Governor of Mombas, he took advantage of a scarcity to feed the starving Wanika from the public granaries. He was careful, however, to secure as pledges of repayment the wives and children of his debtors, and he lost no time in selling off the whole number. Such a feat was probably little suspected by our countrymen, when, to honour enlightened beneficence, they welcomed the statesman with all the truimphs of Exeter Hall, presented him with costly specimens of geology and gold chronometers, entertained him at the expense of Government, and sent him from Aden to Zanzibar in the H.E.I.C's brig of war "Tigris." This Oriental votary of free trade came to a merited end. In 1844 he was one of the prisoners taken by Bana Mtakha, chief of Sewy, after the late Sazzid's ill-starred and ill-managed force had been destroyed by the Bajuny spear. Recognised by the enraged savages, he saw his sons expire in torments; he was terribly mutilated during life, and was put to death with all the refinements of cruelty. The Wanika consider service, like slavery, a dishonour; they have also some food-prejudices which render them troublesome to Europeans. The missionaries were obliged to engage Moslems as menials.

We had proposed a short excursion inland from Mombas, but everything was against its execution. The land was parched up, provisions were unprocurable, and neither guides nor porters would face the plundering parties then near the town. Indeed, it is to be feared that the entrance to Chhaga, Kilimanjaro, and the hill-country, will be closed to travellers for many years. Such is the normal state of East Africa. The explorer can never be sure of finding a particular road practicable: a few murders will shut it for an age, and stop him at the very threshold of ingress. On the other hand, the merchant always commands an entrance for his goods: if one be blocked up, another forthwith opens. But last year the north-western province of Ukambany, called Kiknyu, first visited by the enterprising Dr. Krapf at the imminent risk of life, began commercial intercourse with Mombas. The ground is reached after fourteen long stages, and the route bids fair to become a highway into Intertropical Africa. But let not geographers indulge in golden visions of the future! Some day the Arabs of Mombas will seize and sell a caravan, or the fierce Gallas will prevail against it. Briefly, no spirit of prophecy is needed to predict that the Kikuyu line will share the fate of many others. But a few years ago the Wakuafy were the terror of this part of Africa; they have now been almost exterminated by a tribe of cogeners speaking the same dialect, the Masai. The habitat of this grim race is the grassy and temperate region westward of Chhaga: nomades, but without horses, they roam over the country foraging their camels and herds, without, it is said, building huts, and halting where water and green meat abound. They are described as a fine, tall, and dark nation, like the Somal, with a fearful appearance, caused by their nodding plumes, their pavoises or shields long as those of Kafirs, their fatal knob-sticks, and glittering spears of shovel-breadth, made of the excellent charcoal-smelted ore of the interior. Their rude and abrupt manners terrify Sawahili strangers; they will snatch a cloth from the traveller's body, and, to test his courage, bend a bow with an arrowhead touching his limbs: life is valueless amongst them, and arms are the sole protection. When in peaceful mood, they are visited by traders from Mombas, Wasin, Tanga, and Pangany. This year, however, even those who went up from the southern points feared to pass the frontier. Cattle is the end and aim of their forays: all herds, they say, are theirs by the gift of their god and by right of strength-in fact, no other nation should dare to claim possession of a cow. They never attack, I am told, by night, like other Africans, disdain the name of robbers, and delay near the place plundered, dancing, singing, and gorging beef, to offer the enemy his revenge. They fear the gun because it pierces their shields, and, though rough in demeanour, they are not, according to travellers, inhospitable. Until this year they have shunned meeting Moslems and civilised men in the field: having obtained a victory, they will, I fear, repeat the experiment.

Chapter IV.-Departure From Mombas.

A report prevalent in Mombas-even a Sawahili sometimes speaks the truth-and the march of an armed party from the town which denoted belief in their own words, induced my companions and myself to hasten up once more to the Rabai Hills, expecting to find the mission-house invested by savages. The danger had been exaggerated, but the inmates strongly advised to take temporary shelter in the town. Left Kisulodiny on the 22d of January 1857. Some nights afterwards, fires were observed upon the neighbouring hills, and Wanika scouts returned with a report that the Masai were in rapid advance. The wise few fled at once to the Kaza, or hidden and barricaded strong hold, which these people prepare for extreme danger. The foolish many said, "tomorrow morning we will drive our flocks and herds to safety." But ere that morning dawned upon the world, a dense mass of wild spearmen, sweeping with a shout and yell can clashing arms by the the mission-house, which they either saw not or they feared to enter, dashed upon the scattered village in the vale below, and left the ground strewed with the corpses of hapless fugitives. Thence they rushed down to the sea, driving their plunder, and found a body of Belochies and Arabs, Sawahilis and slaves, posted with matchlocks to oppose progress. The robbers fled at the first volley. Like true Orientals, the soldiers at once dispersed to secure the cattle; when the Masai, rallying, fell upon them, drove them away in ignominious flight, and slew twenty-five of their number. They presently retired to the hill-ranges, amused themselves with exterminating as many Wanika as they could catch, and, full of blood and beef, returned triumphant to their homes.

Not a head of game, not a hippopotamus, was to be found near Mombas. We finished our geographical inquires, shook hands with divers acquaintances, returned to the "Riami," and on the 24^th of January departed with gladdened hearts. The accidents of voyage turned in our favour; there was a bright fresh breeze, and a current running southward thirty or thirty-five miles a-day. After six hours of drowsy morning sailing, "Ras Tewy," a picturesque point, hove in sight, and two hours more brought the "Raimi" to anchor in Gasy Bay. This coast has more caralline reefs than harbours; mariners dare not traverse the seas by night, and in the open roads they are ill defended from the strong north-eastern gales. Gasy is a village of wattled huts, chiefly inhabited by remnants of the proud Mazrui, still exiled from Mombas: the land belongs to the Wadigo savages, and is fertile enough to repay plantation. The settlement lies at some distance from the shore, deep bosomed in trees behind a tall screen of verdure; only the coco nodding over the dense underwood betrays its position from the sea. Our crew armed themselves to accompany my companion on shore: he was civilly received, with sundry refreshments of coco-nut water and rasped pulp made into cakes with rice flour. The footprints of a small lion appeared upon the sand, but we were too old sportsmen to undertake the fruitless toil of tracking him. Ensued a cool breezy night on board the "Riamai." Our gallant captain, a notable melancholist, sat up till dawn chatting with Said bin Salim, who trembled at the sounds of scattered washes and the wind moaning round the small coralline island, which here breaks the swell of the Indian Ocean.

At sunrise we again made sail, and after long sighting a conspicuous seamark, the two high hummocks called the "Peaks of Wasin," in three hours entered the deep narrow sea-channel, which, running due east and west, separates Wasin Island from the mainland. Northwards, this bank of coralline, about two and a quarter miles long by one in breadth, is defended by diminutive cliffs and ledges, upon which the blue wave breaks its force. The southern shore is low, and rich in the gifts of floatsom and jetsom: here the tide, flowing amongst the mangrove forests and under shady crags, forms little bays by no means unpicturesque. To windward lies the Wasin Bank, with four or five plateaus of tree-tufted rock emerging a few feet from the crystal floor. The main island is thinly veiled on the leewards side by a red argillaceous soil, which produces a thick growth of thorny plants, creepers and parasites. Eastward, where the mould is deeper, there is richer vegetation, and even some stunted coeos.

The only settlement occupies the centre of the island's length on the northern shore, opposite the coast. It contains three mosques, long, flat-roofed rooms of lime and coralline, fronted obliquely to face Mecca; little huts and large houses of mangrove timber tied with coir-rope, plastered with clay, and in some cases adorned with whitewash. The sloping thatch-roof already approaches in magnitude the disproportion of the Madagascar cottage. Huge calabashes spread their fleshy arms over the village; and the abodes of the dead, as at Zanzibar, are built amongst the habitations of the living. Water must be brought from the main: it is brackish, but not unwholesome. The climate, doubtless aggravated by the graveyards and the cowries festering in a fiery sun, is infamous for fevers and helcoma. The population is a bigoted and evil-minded race, a collection of lymphatic Arabs, hideous Sawahili, ignoble half-casts, and thievish slaves. The Sazzid of Zanzibar maintains no garrison here. Banyaus are forbidden by their law to trade in cowries, and native merchants find few profits at Wasin. At the beginning of the wet monsoon, however, there is some inland traffic. Caravans, to which the Wadigo and Wasegeju savages serve as porters, start from Wanga and other little Bunders on the coast, make the Waknafy and Masai countries in twenty days, remain there trading three or four months, and return laden with ivory and a few slaves purchased en route.

My companion an I landed at Wasin and found the shore crowded with a mob of unarmed gazers, who did not even return our salams: we resolved in future to keep such greetings for those who deserve them. After sitting half an hour in a shed called the Fenzeh or Custom-house, we were civilly accosted by an old man, whose round head showed him to be an Indian. Abd-el-Karim led us to his house, seated us in chairs upon a terrace, and mixed a cooling drink in a vase not usually devoted to such purpose. As the "Raimi" was discharging cargo, we walked into the jungle, followed by a ragged tail of boys and men, to inspect some old Portuguese wells. As we traversed the village, all the women fled,-a proof that El Islam flourishes. After struggling through a matted thorny jungle, we came upon two pits sunk in solid rock: Said bin Salim was bitterly derided whilst he sounded the depth (forty feet); and by way of revenge, I dropped a hint about buried gold, which has doubtless been the cause of hard labour and severe heart-aches to the churls of Wasin. There is no game on the island or on the main. In the evening we quitted the squalid settlement without a single regret.

Our Nakhoda again showed symptoms of trickery; he had been allowed to ship cargo from Mombas to Wasin, and, Irish-like, he thereupon founded a right to ship cargo from Wasin to Tanga. Unable to disabuse his mind by mild proceedings, I threatened to cut the cable; and thus once more, the will of Japhet prevailing over that of Shem, we succeeded, not without aid from an Oman craft, in drawing up our ground-tackle about an hour after noon. The wind was high and the sea rough, the old "Riami" groaned in every timber as she shaved the reefs, and floated into the open. We then sped merrily over waves which could have alarmed none but Said bin Salim. The little man busied himself with calculating the time it would take to round the several promontories. As the water became smoother under the lee of Pemba, he made bold to quote these martial lines,--

"I have backed the steed since my eyes saw light,
And have fronted Death till he feared my sight.
And the riving of helm and the piercing of mail
Were the dreams of my youth-are my manhood's delight!"

The coast is concealed by a high thick hedge of verdure, over which peer the heads of a few cocos. Its background is the rocky purple wall of Bondei, here and there broken by tall blue cones. After two hours of brisk sailing we were abreast of a point called by our crew Kwalla, bounding the deep bay and islets of Jongoliany. Approaching Tanga, we shortened sail, or we might have made it at 4 P.M. But the entrance is considered intricate; and as we had no pilot, our captain of the hen's heart preferred hobbling in under a jib which the crew, now wasted by sickness, took a good hour to hoist. At last having threaded the "bab," or narrow rock-bound passage which separates the bluff headland of Tanga Island from Ras Rashid on the main, we glided into the bay, and anchored in three fathoms water, opposite, and about half a mile from, the town.

Tanga Bay extends six miles deep by five in breadth. The entrance is partially barred by a coralline bank, the ancient site of the Arab settlement. This islet still contains a small square stone fort and scattered huts. It is well wooded, but the water obtained by digging in the sand is scarcely potable. It is an imperfect break during the N.E. monsoon; and when a high sea rolls up, vessels must anchor under the mainland: whilst the S.W. winds blow, it is all but impossible to leave the harbour without accidents. The bay is embanked with abundant verdure, and surrounded by little villages. It receives the contents of two fresh-water streamlets; westward, the Mtofu; and Mtu Mvony from the north-west: the latter at several miles from its mouth must be crossed by a ferry. The hippopotamus is found in small numbers at the embouchures of both these streams. I defer an account of our sport till bw meet that unamiable pachyderm upon the Pangany river.

Tanga-"the Sail"-like all the towns of the Mrima, ⁽²⁰⁾ or Mountain, is a patch of thatched pent-shaped huts, built upon a bank overlooking the sea, in a straggling grove of coco and calabash. The population numbers between 4000 and 5000 souls, including twenty Banyans and fifteen Belochies, with the customary consumptive Jemadar. The citizens are a homely-looking race, chiefly occupied with commerce, and they send twice a-year, in June and November, after the great and little rains, trading parties to the Chhaga and the Masai countries. The imports are chiefly cotton-stuffs, brass and iron wires, and beads, of which not less than 400 varieties are current in these lands. The returns consist of camels and asses, a few slaves, and ivory, of which I was told 70,000 lb. Passes through Tanga. The citizens also trade with the coast savages, and manufacture hardwares from imported metal. The hard, red, and yellow clay produces in plenty holcus and sesamum, cassava, plantains, and papaws. Mangos and pine-apples are rare; but the jambi, an indian damson, the egg-plant, and the toddy tree, grow wild. Of late years Tanga has been spared the mortification of the Masai, who have hunted and harried in this vicinity many a heard. It is now, comparatively speaking, thickly inhabited.

We landed on the morning of the 27^th January, and were met upon the sea-shore, in absence of the Arab governor, by the Diwans or Sawahili head-men, the Jemadar and his Belochies, the collector of customs, Mizan Sahib, a daft old Indian, and other dignitaries. They conducted us to the hut formerly tenanted by M. Erhardt; brought coffee, fruit, and milk; and, in fine, treated us with peculiar civility. That day was spent in inquiries about the commerce and geography of the interior, and in hearkening to wild tales concerning the Æthiopic Olympus, Kilimanjaro. Here Sheddad built his city of brass, and encrusted the hill-top with a silver dome that shines with various and surpassing colours. Here now the Janu, or fiery beings, bold their court, and baffle the attempts of man's adventurous foot. The mountain recedes as the traveller advances, and the higher he ascends the higher rises the summit. At last blood bursts from the nostrils, the fingers bend backwards, and the most adventurous is fain to stop. Amongst this Herodotian tissue of fact and fable, ran one fine thread of truth: all testified to the intense cold.

In the evening we were honoured with the Ngoma Khu, a full orchestra, for which a dollar was a trifle, if noise be of any value. And we took leave for the night, provided with a bullock and half-a-dozen goats, with fruit and milk, by the Diwans. These head-men, who prefer the title of Sultan, are in the proportion of a dozen per village, each omnipotent within his own walls. The vulgar may not sit on chairs, carpets, or fine mats,-use umbrellas or wear turbans in their presence; moreover none but the head-man dances the Pyrrhic on solemn occasions. Said bin Salim described them as a kind of folk who wish to eat-mere beggars. They promised readily, however, to escort me to one of the ancient cities of the coast.

Setting out at 8 A.M. with a small party of spearmen, I walked four of five miles south of Tanga, on the Tangata road, over a country strewed with the bodies of huge millepedes, and dry as Arabian sand. The fields were burned in readiness for rain, and the peasants dawdled listlessly, patting the clods with bits of wood. At last we traversed a khor or lagoon, drained by the recedng tide, and walking over crab-holes, sighted our destination. From afar it resembled a ruined castle. Entering by a gap in the enceinte, I found a parallelogram two hundred yards long, of solid coralline and lime, in places torn by trees that have taken root there well bastioned and loop-holed for musketry. The site is raised considerably above the country. It is concealed from the sea-side by a screen of trees and the winding creek. That leaves the canoes high and dry during the ebb-tide: full water makes it an island. In the centre, also split up by huge creepers, and in the last stage of dilapidation, are the remains of a Mosque, evidencing vestiges of a rude art. I was shown, with some pretension, a "writing," which proved to be the name of a lettered Sawahili perpendicularly scratched upon a stuccoed column. The ruins of houses are scattered over the enceinte, and a masonry well, eight feet deep, sank in the underlying coralline, yields a sufficient of earthy water. The thatched huts of certain Wasegeju savages, who use the ruins as pens for their goats, asses, and stunted cows, attesting the present degradation of the land. Near a modern village of cadjan-hovels, and tree-palisades upon the bank of the creed, I was shown another old well about eight feet deep, and bone dry. None of the present tenants could relate a tradition of the ruins. The Arabs who accompanied me, however, declared them to be of the Zurabi, the dynasty preceding the present rulers of Oman. If so, they may date from one hundred and fifty years. I returned in time to witness funeral. The mourners were women, with blackened faces, dressed in various-coloured clothes. They keened all that day, and the drum paraded its monotonous sounds until dark streaked with pale light the cold surface of the eastern skies.

The people of Tanga hold at Ambony, a neighbouring village, every fifth day, a "golio" or market with the savages of the interior. Having assumed an Arab dress-a turban of portentous circumference, and a long henna-dyed shirt-and accompanied by Said bin Salim with his excalibar, by the consumptive Jemadar, who sat down to rest every ten minutes, and an old Arab, Khalfan bin Abdillah, who had constituted himself our cicerone, I went to inspect the scene. Walking along the coast, we passed through a village of huts and cocos, filled with forges, which were already at work, and a school of young hopefuls stunning one another. After two miles, we crossed some muddy tidal creeks, corded over with creepers and tree-roots, a sandy inlet, and the small sweet surface-drain, Mtofu, which had water up to the waist. Another mile brought us to Beliemoth River, a deep streamlet flowing under banks forty or fifty feet high covered with calabash and jungle trees. Women were being ferried over; in ecstasies of fear, they hung down their heads, and hid their faces between their knees till the danger passed. The savages of this coast are by no means a maritime race; they have no boats, rarely fish and, unable to swim, are stopped by a narrow stream. Having crossed the river, we traversed plantations of cocos and plantains, and ascending a steep hill, found the market "warm," as Easterns say, upon the seaward slope. The wild people, Washenzy, Wasembara, Wadigo, and Wasegeju, armed as usual, stalked about, whilst their women, each with baby on back,-its round head nodding with every movement of the parental person, yet it never cries, that model-baby,-carried heavy loads of saleable stuff, or sat opposite their property, or chaffered and gesticulated upon knotty questions of bargain. These hard used and ill-favoured beings paid toll for ingress at a place where cords were stretched across the road. The wild people exchanged their lean sheep and goats, cocos and plantains, grain and ghee, for cottons, beads and ironware, dry fish, salt, intoxicating liquors, spices, needles and thread, hooks, and blue-stone. The groups gathered under the several trees were noisy, but peaceful; often, however a lively scene, worthy of Donnybrook in its palmiest days, takes place, knobstick and dagger being used by the black factions freely as fist and shillalah are in civilised lands. We returned at noon over the sands, which were strewed with sea-slugs, and in places with chrelodins lying dead in the sun; the heat of the ground made my barefooted companions run forward to shade, from time to time, like the dogs in Tibet.

Sundry excursions delayed us six days at Tanga. Our visit ended with a distribution of caps and muslins, and we received farewell calls till dark. After a sultry night, varied by bursts of rain, which sounded like buckets sluicing the poop, at 5 A.M., on the 2d of February, we drifted out to sea, under the influence of the barri or land-breeze. Five hours of lazy sailing ran us to Tangata, an open road between Tanga and Pangany. Here we delayed a day to inspect some ruins, where we had been promised Persian inscriptions and other wonders.

After casting anchor, I entered a canoe, and was paddled across the waters of a bay, where, according to local tradition, a flourishing city had been submerged by the encroaching waves. The submarine tombs, however, though apparent to the Sawahili eye, eluded mine. We then entered a narrow creek, grounding at every ten yards, and presently reached an inlet. All mangrove ground and mud below. Landing at a village called Tongony, we followed the shore for a few paces, turned abruptly to the left over broken ground, and sighted the ruins.

Moonlight would have tempered the view; it was a grisly spectacle in the gay and glowing shine of the sun. Shattered walls, the remnants of homesteads in times gone by, rose, choked with the luxuriant growth of decay, and sheltering in their desert shade the bat and the night-jar. In an extensive cemetery I was shown the grave of a wali or saint-his very name had perished-covered with a cadjan roof, floored with stamped earth, cleanly swept, and garnished with a red and white flag. Near a spacious mosque, well-built with columns of cut coralline, and adorned with an elaborate prayer-niche, are several tall mausolea of elegant construction, their dates denoting an antiquity of about two hundred years. Beyond the legend of the bay, none could give me information concerning the people that have passed away: the tombs bore the names of Sawahili; but the architecture proved a superior race.

In a mausoleum, the gem of the place, appeared a chipped fragment of Persian glazed tile, with large azure letters in the beautiful character called Rukaa; the inscription was imperfect, and had probably adorned some mosque or tomb in the far north. It was regarded with a superstitious reverence by the Sawahili, who declared that sultan Kimwera of Usumbara had sent a party of bold men to bear it away; nineteen died mysterious deaths, and the tile was thereupon restored to its place. A few muslins had a wonderful effect upon their fancies: I was at once allowed by the Diwans, although none of them would bear a hand, to remove it.

This purchase concluded, we returned to the "Riami," followed by the head-men, who, after tasting dates, sweetmeats, and coffee, naturally became discontented with the promise amount of "hishmat." There were four or five carefully-built old wells in the ruined city, but all had been exhausted by age, and the water produced by them upon the low grounds was exceedingly nauseous. As a rule, these people readily apply for aid to Europeans; such is their opinion of the wazungu, or "wise men:" and if showers accompany the traveller, he is looked upon as a beneficent being, not without a suspicion of white magic. We spent the remainder of the day and night at Taugata fanned by the north-east breeze, and cradled by the rocking send of the Indian Ocean. Two low and distant islands imperfectly define the bay; the country around is fertile, and a mass of little villages studs the shore. The existing settlements are probably modern; none of them appear in our maps and charts. Here we look leave of Khalfan our guide, an old man, but still hale and vigorous. No Oman Arab is, I may remark, worth his salt until his beard is powdered by age.

At 5 A.M. on the 3d February we hoisted sail, and slipped down with the tepid morning breeze to Pangany, sighted Maziny Island, its outpost, after three hours' run. It was necessary to land with some ceremony at a place which we intended to make a starting-point. Soon after arrival I sent Said bin Salim, in all his bravery, on shore with the Sazzid of Zanzibar's circular letter to the wali or governor, to the jemadar, to the collector of customs, and the different diwans. All this preparation for a mere trifle! But we are in Africa. Even in Europe it is not always found easy to march into an enemy's country. My companion and I landed with our Portuguese servants and luggage in the cool of the afternoon.

We were received with high honour. The orchestra consisted of three huge drums, trunks of cocos, covered with goat-leather, and beat with fist instead of stick; sina, or bassoons of black wood, at least five feet long; a pair of edge-setting zumary, or flageolets; and the instrument of dignity, an upatu, or brasspan, whose bottom is performed upon with sticks like cabbabe-stalks. The diwans pyrrhic'd before us with the pomp and circumstance of drawn swords, whilst bare-headed slave-girls, with hair à la Brutus, sand and flapped their skirts over the ground, with an affectedly modest and downcast demeanour. A crowd of negroes and half-castes stood enjoying the vile squeak of the pipes and the "bom-bom" of the monstrous drums. After half-an-hour's endurance, we were led into the upper-storied house of the wali-meriko-a freedman of the late Sazzid Said, and spent the evening in a committee of ways and means.

Chapter V.-Pangany "In The Hole."

African travel in the heroic ages of Bruce, Mungo Park, and Clappertou, had a prestige which lived through two generations; and, as is the fate of things sublunary, came to an untimely end. The public satiated with adventure and invention, suffers in these days of "damnable license of printing" from the humours of severe surfeit. It nauseates the monotonous recital of rapine, treachery, and murder; of ugly savages-the mala gens, as was said anent Kentish men, of a bona terra-of bleared misery by day, and animated filth by night, and of hunting adventures and hairbreadth escapes, lacking the interest of catastrophe. It laments the absence of tradition and monuments of the olden time, the dearth of variety, of beauty, of romance. Yet the theme still continues to fulfil all the conditions of attractiveness set forth by Leigh Hunt. It hath remoteness and obscurity of place, difference of custom, marvellousness of hearsay. Events surpassing, yet credible; sometimes barbaric splendour-at least luxuriance of nature; savage contentment, personal danger and suffering, with a moral enthusiasm. And to the writer, no hours are more fraught with smiling recollections-nothing can be more charming than the contrast between his vantage-ground of present ease and that past perspective of wants, hardships, and accidents, upon which he gazes through the softening medium of time.

We arose early in the morning after arrival at Pangany, and repaired to the terrace for the better enjoyment of the view. The vista of the river-with low coco-groves to the north, tall yellow cliffs on the southern side, a distance of blue hill, the broad stream bounded by walls of verdure, and the azure sea, dotted with diobolites, or little black rocks-wanted nothing but the finish and polish of art to bring out the infinitude and rude magnificence of nature. A few donjon-ruins upon the hills would enable it to compare with the most admired prospects of the Rhine, and with half-a-dozen white kiosks, minarets, and latticed summer-houses, it would almost rival that gem of creation, the Bosphorus.

Pangany "in the hole," and its smaller neighbour Kumba, hug the left bank of the river, upon a strip of shore bounded by the sea, and a hill-range ten or eleven miles distant. Opposite are Bueny and Mzimo Pia, villages built under yellow sandstone bluffs, impenetrably covered with wild trees. The river, which separates these rival couples, may be 200 yards broad. The mouth has a bar and a wash at low tide, except at the south, where there is a narrow channel, now seven or eight-in Captain Owen's time, twelve-feet deep. The entrance for vessels-they lie snugly opposite the town-is difficult and dangerous: even Hamid, the most niggardly of niggard suris, expended a dollar upon a pilot. At low water the bed of this tidal stream shrinks. During the rains, swelling with hillfreshes, it is almost potable; and when the sea flows, it is briny as the main. The wells produce heavy and brackish drink; but who, as the people say, will take the trouble to fetch sweeter? The climate is said to be healthy in the dry season, but the long and severe rains are rich in fatal bilious remittents.

Pangany boasts of nineteen or twenty stone houses. The remainder is a mass of cadjan huts, each with its wide mat-encircled yard, wherein all the business of life is transacted. The settlement is surrounded by a thorny jungle, which at times harbours a host of leopards. One of these beasts lately scaled the high terrace of our house, and seized upon a slave-girl. Her master, the burly backwali, who was sleeping by her side, gallantly caught up his sword, ran into the house, and bolted the door, heedless of the miserable cry, "B'ana, help me!" ⁽²¹⁾ The wretch was carried to the jungle and devoured. The river is equally full of alligators, and whilst we were at Pangany a boy disappeared. When asked by strangers why they do not shoot their alligators, and burn their wood, the people reply that the former bring good-luck, and the latter is a fort to which they can fly in need. Cocos, arecas, and plantains, grow about the town. Around are gardens of papaws, betel, and jamlis; and somewhat further, lie extensive plantations of holcus and maize, of sesamum, and other grains. The clove flourishes; and, as elsewhere upon the coast, a little cotton is cultivated for domestic use. Beasts are rare. Cows die after eating the grass; goats give no milk; and sheep are hardly procurable. But fish abounds. Poultry thrives, as it does all over Africa; and before the late feuds, clarified cow-butter, that "one sauce" of the outer East, was cheap and well-flavoured.

Pangany, with the three other villages, may contain a total of four thousand inhabitants-Arabs, Moslem Sawahili, and heathens. Of these, female slaves form a large proportion. Twenty Banyans manage the lucrative ivory trade of the Nguru, Masai, and Chhaga countries. These merchants complain loudly of their pagazi, or porters, who receive ten dollars for the journey, half paid down, the remainder upon return; and the proprietor congratulates himself if, after payment, only 15 per cent run away. The Hindoos' profits, however, must be enormous. I saw one man to whom twenty-six thousand dollars were owed by the people. What part must interest and compound-interest have played in making up such sum, where even Europeans demand 40 percent for monies lent on safe mortgage and bottomry! Their only drawback is the inveterate beggary of the people. Here the very princes are mendicants; and the Banyan dare not refuse the seventy or eighty savages who every evening besiege his door with cries for grain, butter, or a little oil. Besides Zanzibar rafters, which are cut in the river, holcus, maize, and ghee, Pangany, I am tole, exports annually 35,000 lb. of ivory, 1750 lb. of black rhinoceros' horn, and 16 of hippopotamus' teeth.

After the dancing ceremony arose a variety of difficulties, resulting from the African travellers' twin banes, the bollar and the blood-feud. Pangany and Bueny, like all settlements upon this coast, belong, by a right of succession, to the Sazzid, or Prince Regnant of Zanzibar, who confirms and invests the governors and diwans. At Pangany, however, these officials are par conge d'elire selected by Kimwere, Sultan of Usembara, whose ancestors received tribute and allegiance from para to the sea-board. On the other hand, Bueny is in the territory of the Wazegura, a violent and turbulent heathen race, inveterate slave-dealers, and thoughtlessly allowed by the Arabs to lay up goodly stores of muskets, powder, and ball. Of course the two tribes, Wasumbara and Wazegura, are deadly foes. Moreover, about a year ago, a violent intestine feud broke out amongst the Wazegura, who, at the time of our visit, were burning and murdering, kidnapping and slave-selling in all directions. The citizens of Pangany, eherefore, hearing that we were bearers of a letter from the Sazzid of Zanzibar to Sultan Kimwere, marked out for us the circuitous route via Tangate, where no Wazegura could try their valour. We, on the other hand, wished to inspect the Pangany River, determined upon proceeding by the directest line along its left or northern bank. The timid townsmen had also circulated a report that we were bound for Chaga and Kilimanjaro; the Massai were "out," the rains were settling in and they saw with us no armed escort. They resolved, therefore not to accompany us; but not the less did each mane xpect as usual his gift of dollars and bribe of inducement.

The expense of the journey was even a more serious consideration. In these lands the dollar is almighty. If deficient, you must travel alone, unaccompanied at least by any but blacks, without other instrument but a note-book, and with few arms; you must conform to every nauseous custom; you will be subjected, at the most interesting points, to perpetual stoppages; your remarks will be wellnigh worthless; and you may make up your mind that, unless one in a million, want and hardship will conduct you to sickness and death. This is one extreme, and from it to the other there is no golden mean. With abundance of money-certainly not less than £5000 per annum-an exploring party can trace its own line, paying off all opposers; it can study whatever is requisite; handle sextants in presence of negroes, who would cut every throat for one inch of brass; and by travelling in comfort, can secure a fair chance of return. Either from Mombas or from Pangany, with an escort of one hundred matchlockmen, we might have marched through the Masai plunderers to Chhaga and Kilimanjaro. But pay, porterage, and provisions for such a party, would have amounted to at least £100 per week: a month and a half would have absorbed our means. Thus it was, gentle reader, that we were compelled to rest contented with a visit to Fuga.

Presently the plot thickened. Muigni Khatib, son of Sultan Kimwere, a black of most unprepossessing physiognomy, with a "villanous trick of the eye, and a foolish hanging of the nether lip," a prognathous jaw, garnished with cat-like mustaches and cobweb beard, a sour frown, and abundant surliness by way of dignity, dressed like an Arab, and raised by El Islam above his fellows, sent a message directing us to place in his hands what we intended for his father. This chief was travelling to Zanzibar in fear and trembling. He had tried to establish at his village, Kirore, a Romulian asylum for runaway slaves, and, having partially succeeded, he dreaded the consequences. The Beloch jemadar strongly urged us privily to cause his detention at the islands; a precaution somewhat to oriental for our tastes. We refused, however, the Muigni's demand in his own tone. Following their prince, the dancing diwans claimed a fee for permission to reside; as they worded it, "el adah"-the habit; based it upon an ancient present from Colonel Hamerton; and were in manifest process of establishing a local custom which, in Africa, becomes law to remotest posterity. We flatly objected, showed our letters, and in the angriest of moods, threatened reference to Zanzibar. Briefly all began to beg bakhshish; but I cannot remember any one obtaining it.

Weary of these importunities, we resolve to visit Chogway, a Beloch outpost, and thence, aided by the jemadar who had preceded us from pangany, to push for the capital village of Usumbara. We made preparations secretly, dismissed the "Riami," rejected the diwans who wished to accompany us as spies, left Said bin Salim and one Portuguese to watch our property in the house of Meriko, the governor, who had accompanied his Muigni to Zanzibar, and, under pretext of a short shooting excursion, hired a long canoe with four men, loaded it with the luggage required for a fortnight, and started with the tide at 11 A.M. on the 6^th of January 1857.

First we grounded; then we were taken aback; then a puff of wind grove us forward with railway speed; then we grounded again. At last we were successful in turning the first dangerous angle of the river. Here, when sea-breeze and tide meet the "buffing stream"-as usual at the mouths of African rivers the wind is high and fair from the interior-navigation is perilous to small craft. May have filled and sunk beneath the ridge of short chopping waves. After five miles, during which the stream, streaked with lines of froth, gradually narrowed, we found it barely brackish; and somewhat further, sweet as the celebrated creek water of Guiana.

Now, while writing amid the soughing blasts, the rain and the darkened air of a south-west monsoon, I remember with yearning the bright and beautiful spectacle of these African rivers, whose loveliness, like that of the dead, seems enhanced by proximity to decay. We had changed the amene and graceful sandstone scenery, on the sea-board, for a view novel and most characteristic. The hippopotamus now raised his head from the waters, snorted, gazed upon us, and sank into his native depths. Alligators, terrified by the splash of oars, waddled down with their horrid claws, dinting the slimy bank, and lay like yellow logs, measuring us with small, malignant, green eyes, deep set under warty brows. Monkeys rustled the tall trees. Below, jungle-men and women-

"So withered, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth,

And yet are on't"---

planted their shoulder-cloths, their rude crates, and coarse weirs, upon the mud inlets where fish abounded. The sky was sparkling blue, the water bluer, and over both spread the thinnest haze, tempering raw tones of colour to absolute beauty. On both sides of the shrinking stream a dense curtain of many-tinted vegetation,

"Yellow and black, and pale and hectic red,"

shadowed swirling pools, where the current swept upon the growth of intertwisted fibres. The Nakhl el Shaytan, or Devil's Date, eccentric in foliage and frondage, projected gracefully curved arms, sometimes thirty and forty feet long, over the wave. This dwarf-giant of palms has no trunk, but the mid-rib of each branch is thick as a man's thigh. Upon the watery margin large lilies of snowy brightness, some sealed by day; others, wide expanded, gleamed beautifully against the dark verdure and the russet-brown of the bank-stream. In scattered spots were interwoven traces of human presence; tall arecas and cocos waving over a now impenetrable jungle; plantain, sugarcane and bitter oranges, choked with wild growth, still lingered about the homestead, blackened by the murderer's fire. And all around reigned the eternal African silence, deep and saddening, broken only by the curlew's scream, or by the breeze rustling the tree-tops, whispering among the matted foliage, and swooning upon the tepid bosom of the wave.

Amid such scenes we rowed and poled till the setting sun spread its cloak of purple over a low white cliff, at whose base the wave breaks, and on whose hoary head linger venerable trees, contrasting with the underwood of the other bank. Here lies the Pir of Wasin, a saint described by our Beloch guide as a "very angry holy man." A Sherif of pure blood, he gallantly headed, in centuries gone by, his Moslem followers, flying from pangany when it was attacked by a ravenous pack of Infidels. The latter seem to have had the advantage in running. They caught the Faithful at these cliffs, and were proceeding to exterminate them, when mother earth, at the Sherif's prayer, opening wide received them in her bosom. This Pir will not allow the trees to be cut down, or the inundation to rise above his tomb. Moreover, if the devotee, after cooking food at the grave in honour of its tenant, ventures to lick fingers-napkins are not used in East Africa-he is at once delivered over to haunting jinns. The Belochies never pass the place without casting a handful of leaves, a bullet, or a few grains of power, into the stream. The guide once told, in the voice of awe, how a Suri Arab, doubtless tainted with Wallali heresy, had expressed an opinion that this Pir had been a mere mortal, but little better than himself; how the scoffer's ship was wrecked within the year; and how he passed through water into jehannum-fire. Probatum est. Defend us, Allah, from the Sins of Reason!

The tide, running like a mill-race, compelled our crew to turn into a little inlet near Pombui, a stockaded village on the river's left bank. The people, who were subject to Zanzibar, flocked out to welcome their strangers, laid down a bridge of coco-ribs, brought chairs, and offered a dish of small green mangos, here a great luxury. We sat under a tree till midnight, unsatiated with the charm of the hour. The moon rained molten silver over the dark foliage of the wild palms, the stars were as golden lamps suspended in the limpid air, and Venus glittered diamond-like upon the front of the firmament. The fire-flies now sparkled simultaneously over the earth; then, as if by concerted impulse, their glow vanished in the glooms of the ground. At our feet lay the black creek; in the jungle beasts roared fitfully; and the night wind mingled melancholy sounds with the swelling murmuring of the stream.

The tide flowing about midnight, we resumed our way. The river then became a sable streak between lofty rows of trees. The hippopotamus snorted close to our stern, and the crew begged me to fire, for the purpose of frightening Sultan Momba-a pernicious rogue. At times we heard the splashing of the beasts as they scrambled over the shoals; at others, they struggled with loud grunts up the miry banks. Then again all was quiet. After a protracted interval of silence, the near voice of a man startled us in the deep drear stillness of night, as though it had been some shostly sound. At 2 A.M., reaching a clear tract on the river-side-the Ghaut or landing-place of Chogway-we made fast the canoe, looked to our weapons, and, covering our faces against the heavy clammy dew, lay down to snatch an hour's sleep. The total distance rowed was about 13.5 miles.

We began the next morning with an inspection of Chogway, the Bazar, to which we were escorted by the jemadar with sundry discharges of matchlocks. It was first occupied about five years ago, when Sultan Kimwere offered Tongway or Meringa-a lofty peak in the continuous range to the north-west-with cheap generosity, as a mission-station to Dr. Krapf. The position is badly chosen, water is distant, the rugged soil produces nothing but vetches and manive, and it is exposed to miasma when the inundation subsides upon the black alluvial plain below the hillock. Commanding, however, the southern Usumbara road, it affords opportunity for something in the looting line. The garrison ever suffers from sickness; and the men, dull as a whaler's crew, abhor the melancholy desolate situation. The frequent creeks around are crossed by tree-bridges. The walk to Pangany, over a rugged road, occupies from five to six hours, yet few but the slaves avail themselves of the proximity. A stout snake-fence surrounds the hill-top, crested by the cadjan penthouses of these Bashi Buzuks: its fortifications are two platforms for matchlockmen planted on high poles, like the Indian "Maychan." The Washenzy savages sometimes creep up at night to the huts, shoot a few arrows, set fire to the matting, and hurriedly levant. When we visited Chogway, the Wazegura were fighting with one another, but they did not molest the Belochies. South of the river rises a detached hill, "Tongway Muanapiro," called in our charts "Gendagenda," which may be seen from Zanzibar. Here rules one Mwere, a chief hostile to the Bashi Buzuks, who not caring to soil their hands with negro blood, make their slaves fight his men, even as the ingenuous youth of Eton sent their scouts to contend at cricket with the ambitious youth of Rubgy. Fifty stout fellows, with an ambitious leader and a little money, might soon conquer the whole country, and establish there an absolute monarchy.

These Beloch mercenaries merit some notice. They were preferred, as being somewhat disciplinable, by the late Sazzid Said, to his futile blacks and his unruly and self-willed Oman Arabs. He entertained of 1000 to 1500 men and scattered them over the country in charge of the forts. The others hate them-divisions even amongst his own children was the ruler's policy-and nickname them "Kurara Kurara." ⁽²²⁾ The jemadar and the governor are rarely on speaking terms. Calling themselves Belochines, they are mostly from the regions about Kech and Bampur. They are mixed up with a rabble-rout of Affghans and Arabs, Indians, and Sudies, ⁽²³⁾ and they speak half-a-dozed different languages. Many of these gentry have left their country for their country's weal. A body of convicts, however, fights well. The mekrani are first-rate behind walls; and if paid, drilled, and officered, they would make as "varmint" light-bobs as Arnauts. They have a knightly fondness for arms. A "young barrel and an old blade" are their delight. All use the matchlock, and many are skilful with sword and shield. Their pay is from two to three dollars a month, out of which they find food and clothes. They never see money from the year's one end to the other, and are as ragged a crew as ever left the barren hills of the north to seek fortune in Africa. They live in tattered hovels, with one meal of grain a day for themselves and slave-girls. To the greediness of mountaineers, the poor devils add the insatiable desires of beggars. The Banyans have a proverb that "a Beluch, a Brahmin, and a buck-goat, eat the trees to which they are tied." Like school-boys, they think nought so fine as the noise of a gun, consequently ammunition is served out to them by the jemadar only before a fight. Sudden and sharp in quarrel, they draw their daggers upon the minimest provocation, have no "mitigation or remorse of voice," and pray in the proportion of one to a dozen. All look forward to "Hindostan, bagh o bustan"-India, the garden; but the Arabs have a canny proverb importing that "the fool who falleth into the fire rarely falleth out of it."

"Fraudare stipendio," saith ancient Justin, was the practice of the great king's satraps: the modern East has strictly preserved the custom. Each station is commanded by a jemadar upon four or five dollars a month, and full licence to peculate. The class is at once under paid and over trusted. The jemadar advances money upon usury to his men, and keeps them six months in arrears; he exacts perquisites from all who fear his hate and need his aid; and he falsifies the muster rolls most impudently, giving twenty-five names to perhaps four men. Thus the jemadar supports a wife and a dozen slaves; sports a fine scarlet coat, a grand dagger, and a silver-hilted sword; keeps flocks of sheep and goats, and trades with the interior for ivory and captives, whilst his company has not a sandal amongst them. Such has been, is, and ever will be the result of that false economy which, in the East, from Stambul to Japan, grudges the penny and flings away the pound.

Having communicated our project to the jemadar of Chogway, he promised, for a consideration, all aid; told us that we should start the next day; and, curious to relate, kept his word. The little settlement, however, affording but five matchlockmen as a guard, and four slave-boys as porters, the C. O. engaged for us a guide and his attendant-nominally paying 10 dollars, and doubtless retaining one-half.

After a night spent in the Magchan, where wind, dust, and ants conspired to make us miserable, we arose early to prepare for marching. About mid-day, issuing from our shed, we placed the kit-now reduced to a somewhat stricte necessaire-in the sun; thus mutely appealing to the "sharm" or shame of our Beloch comrades. A start was effected at five P.M., every slave complaining of his load, snatching up the lightest, and hurrying on regardless of what was left behind. This nuisance endured till summarily stopped by an outward application easily divined. At length, escorted in token of honour by the consumptive jemadar and most of his company, we departed in a straggling Indian file towards Tongway.

The path wound over stony ridges. After an hour it plunged into a dense and thorny thicket, which, during the rains, must be impassable. The evening bellinf of deer, and the clock-clock of partridge, struck our ears. In the open places were the lesses of elephants, and footprints retained by the last year's mud. These animals descend to the plains during the monsoon, and in summer retire to the cool hills. The Belochies shoot, the wild people kill them with poisoned arrows. More than once during our wanderings we found the grave-like trap-pits, called in India Ogi. These are artfully dug in little rises, to fit exactly the elephant, who easily extricates himself from one too large or too small. We did not meet a single specimen; but, judging from the prints-three to three and a half circumferences showing the shoulder height-they are not remarkable for size. The further interior, however, exports the finest, whitest, largest, heaviest, and softest ivory in the world. Tusks weighing 100 lb. each are common, those of 175 lb. are not rare, and I have heard of a pair whose joint weight was 560 lb. It was a severe disappointment to us that we could not revisit this country during the rains. Colonel Hamerton strongly dissuaded us from again risking jungle-fever, and we had a duty to perform in Inner Africa. Sporting, indeed, is a labour which occupies the whole man: to shoot for specimens, between work, is to waste time tn to ways. Game was rare throughout our march. None lives where the land is peopled. In the deserts it is persecuted by the Belochies; and the wild Jagers slay and eat even rats. We heard however, of mabobo buffalo antelope, and a hog-probably the masked boar-lions, leopards in plenty; the nilghae (A. Picta), and an elk, resembling the Indian sambar.

Another hour's marching brought us to the Makam Sazzid Sulayman, a half-cleared ring in the bush, bounded on one side by a rocky and tree-fringed ravine, where water stagnates in pools during the dry season. The pedometer showed six miles. There we passed the night in a small babel of Belochies. One recited his Koran; another prayed; a third told funny stories; whilst a fourth trolled lays of love and war, long ago made familiar to my ear upon the rugged Asian hills. This was varied by slapping lank mosquitoes that flocked to the campfires; by rising to get rid of huge black pismires, whose bite burned like a red-hot needle; and by challenging two parties of savages, who, armed with bows and arrows, passed amongst us, carrying maize to Pangany. The Belochies kept a truly Oriental watch. They sang and shouted during early night, when there is no danger; but they all slept like the dead through the "small hours," the time always chosen by the African freebooter to make his cowardly onslaught.

At daybreak on the 9^th of February, accompanied by a small detachment, we resumed our march. The poitrinaire jemadar, who was crippled by the moonlight and the cold dew, resolved to return, when thawed, with the rest of his company to Chogway. An hour's hard walking brought us to the foot of rugged Tongway, the "great hill." Ascending the flank of the north-eastern spur, we found ourselves, at eight A.M., after five bad miles, upon the chine of a lower ridge-with summer towards the sea-and landward, a wind of winter. Thence pursuing the rugged incline, in another half-hour we entered the Fort, a small square, crenellated, flat-roofed, and white-washed room, tenanted by two Belochies, who appear in the muster-rolls as twenty men. They complained of loneliness and the horrors. Though several goats had been sacrificed, a fearsome demon still haunted the hill, and the weeping and wailing of distressed spirits make their thin blood run chill.

Toagway is the first off-set of the mountain-terrace composing the land of Usumbara. It rises abruptly from the plain; lies north-west of, and nine miles, as the crow flies, distant from Chogway. The summit, about 2000 feet above the sea-level, is clothed with jungle, through which, seeking compass sights, we cut a way with our swords. The deserted ground showed signs of former culture, and our Negro guide sighed as he said that his kinsmen had been driven from their ancient seats into the far inner wastes. Tongway projects long spurs into the plain, where the Pangany river flows noisily through a rocky trough. The mountain surface is a reddish argillaceous and vegetable soil, overlaying grey and ruddy granites and schist. These stones bear the "gold and silver complexion" which is fatal to the chivalrous Shepherd of the Ocean, and the glistening mica still feeds the fancy of the Beloch mercenary. The thickness of the jungle-which contains stunted cocos and bitter oranges, the castor, the wild egg-plant, the bird-pepper-renders the mountain inaccessible from any but the eastern and northern flanks. Around the Fort are slender plantations of maize and manive. Below, a deep hole supplies the sweetest rock-water; and upon the plain a boulder of well-weathered granite, striped with snowy quartz, and about twenty feet high, contains two crevices ever filled by the purest springs. The climate appeared delicious-temperate in the full blaze of an African and tropical summer; and whilst the hill was green, the land around was baked like bread crust.

We had work to do before leaving Tongway. The jemadar ordered for us an escort; but amongst these people, obedience to orders is somewhat optional. Moreover, the Belochies, enervated by climate and want of exercise, looked forward to a mountain-march with displeasure. Showless, bedless, and well-nigh clotheless, even the hope of dollars could scarcely induce them to leave for a week their lazy huts, their piccaninnies, and their black Venuses. They felt happy at Tongway, twice a-day devouring our rice-an unknown luxury; and they were at infinite pains to defer the evil hour. One man declared it impossible to travel without salt, and proposed sending back a slave to Chogway. This involved the loss of at least three days, and was at once rejected.

By hard talking we managed to secure a small party, which demands a few words of introduction to the reader. We have four slave-boys, idle, worthless dogs, who never work save under the rod, think solely of their stomachs, and are addicted to running away. Petty pilferers to the back-bone, they steal, like magpies, by instinct. On the march they lag behind, and, not being professional porters, they are restive as camels when receiving their load. One of these youths, happening to be brother-in-law-after a fashion-to the jemadar, requires incessant supervision to prevent him burdening the others with his own share. The guide, Muigni Wazira, is a huge broad shouldered Sawahili, with a coal-black skin: his high, massive, and regular features look as if carved in ebony, and he frowns like a demon in the Arabian Nights. He is purblind, a defect which does not, however, prevent his leading us into every village, that we may be mulcted in sprig-muslin. Wazira is our rogue, rich in all the peculiarities of African cunning. A prayerless Sherif, he thoroughly despises the Makapry or Infidels; he has a hot temper, and, when provoked, roars like a wild beast. He began by refusing his load, but yielded when it was gently placed upon his heavy shoulder, with a significant gesture in case of recusance. He does not, however, neglect occasionally to pass it to his slave, who, poor wretch, is almost broken down by the double burden.

Rahewat, the Mekrani, calls himself a Beloch, and wears the title of Shah-Sawar, or the Rider-king. He is the "Chelebi," the dandy and tiger of our party. A "good-looking brown man," about twenty-five years old, with a certain girlishness and affectation of tournure and manner, which bode no good, the Rider-king deals in the externals of respectability; he washes and prays with pompous regularity, combs his long hair and beard, trains his bushy mustaches to touch his eyes, and binds a huge turban. He affects the jemadar. He would have taken charge, had we permitted, of the general store of gunpowder-a small leather-bottle wrung from the commandant of Chogaway; and having somewhat high ideas of discipline, he began with stabbing a slave-boy by way of lesson. He talks loud in his native Mekrani and base Persian; moreover, his opinion is ever to the fore. The Rider-king, pleading soldier, positively refuses to carry anything but his matchlock, and a private stock of dates which he keeps ungenerously to himself. He boasts of prowess in vert and venison: we never saw him hit the mark, but we missed some powder and ball, with which he may be more fortunate.

Hamdan, the Maskat Arab, has "seen better days." Melancholia and strong waters have removed all traces of them, except a tincture of letters. Our Mullah, or learned man, is small, thin, brown, long-nosed, and green-eyed, with little spirit and less muscularity. A crafty old traveller, he has a store of comforts for the way; he carries, with his childish matchlock, a drinking-gourd and a ghee-pot, and he sits apart form the crowd for more reasons than one. Strongly contrasting with him is the ancient Mekrani, Shaaban, a hideous decrepit giant, with the negroid type of countenance. He is of the pig-headed, opposed to the soft-headed, order of old man; hard and opinionated, selfish and unmanageable. He smokes, and must drink water all day. He dispenses the wisdom of a Dogberry, much to his hearers' disgust, and he coughs through the hours of night. This senior will carry nothing but his guns, pipe, and gourd, and, despite his grey-beard, he is the drone of the party.

Jemal and Murad Ali are our working men, excellent specimens of the true Beloch-vieux grognards-with a grim, sour humour, especially when the fair sex is concerned. They have black frowning faces, wrinkled and rugged as their natal hills, with pads of muscle upon their short forearms, and high, sinewy, angular calves, remarkable in this land of "sheep-shanks." Sparing of words, when addressed, they merely grunt; but when they speak, it is in a scream. They are angry men, and uncommonly handy with their greasy daggers. With the promise of an extra dollar, they walk off under heavy loads, besides their guns and necessaries. The gem of the party is Sudy Mubarak, who has taken to himself the cognomen of "Bombay." His sooty skin, and teeth pointed like those of the reptilia, denote his Mhiav origin. He is one of those real "Sudies" that delight the passengers in an Indian steamer. Bombay, sold in early youth, carried to Cutch by some Banyan, and there emancipated, looks fondly back upon the home of his adoption and sighs for the day when a few dollars will enable him to return. He has ineffable contempt for all "Jungly niggers." His head is a triumph to Phrenology; a high narrow cranium, flat-fronted, denoting, by arched and rounded crown, full development of the moral region, with deficiency of the perceptives and reflectives. He works on principle, and works like a horse, openly declaring, that not love of us, but attachment to his stomach, makes him industrious. With a sprained ankle, and a load quite disproportioned to his chetif body, he insists upon carrying two guns. He attends us everywhere, manages our purchases, is trusted with all messages, and, when otherwise disengaged, is at every man's beck and call. He had enlisted under the jemadar of Chogway. We thought, however, so highly of his qualifications, that persuasion and paying his debts induced him, after a little coqueting, to take leave of soldiering and follow our fortunes. Sudy Bombay will be our head gun-carrier, if he survive his present fever, and, I doubt not, will prove himself a rascal in the end..

A machine so formed could hardly be expected to move without some creaking. The Belochies were not entirely under us, and in the East no man will serve two masters. For the first few days, many a loud wrangling and muttered cursing showed signs of a dissolution. One would not proceed because the Rider-king monopolised the powder; another started on his way home because he was refused some dates; and during the first night all Bombay's efforts were required to prevent a sauve qui peut. But by degrees the component parts fitted smoothly and worked steadily: at last we had little to complain of, and the men volunteered to follow wherever we might lead.

Chapter VI.-The March To Fuga.

"Es gibt in Contral Afrika Paradisco, dio mit den Zeit die Civilisation aussuchen wird zutn Bosten der Menschbeit."-J. Von Muller.

On the 10^th of February, after a night of desert-silence, we arose betimes, and applied ourselves to the work of porterage. Our luggage again suffered reduction. ⁽²⁴⁾ I was, however, past 6 A.M. when, forming Indian file, we began to descend the thorn-clad goat-track, which spans the north-east spur of Mount Tong. Wazira, as usual in times of difficulty, disappeared-we had heard the groans of a lion. At length, by dint of wandering through rush and tiger-grass, we struck into the Pangany Road. After three hours' hard walking, we rested at tsome fetid pools in a reedy finmara. The sun began to blister, and we had already occupied the shadow of a tall rock, intending to doze till the afternoon, when Wazira, for reasons of his own, induced us to advance by promising better water. The path ran over stony ground, with frequent thorny ridges, and narrow green dales or rather ravines, bordered with lovely amphitheatres of lofty and feathery tropical trees, showing signs of inundation during the rains. But the kizakzy (north-east monsoon) had dried up the marrow of the earth, and, though we searched as for treasure, we found no water.

Noon came, and the sun towered in his pride of place. Even whilst toiling up the stony dirty track over a series of wearisome monotonous slopes, which no sea-breeze can reach, I could not but admire the novel aspect of the land. The ground was brick-red, and this colour extended half-way up the tree-bores, which the ants had streaked with ascending and descending galleries. Over head floated a filmy canopy of sea-green verdure, pierced by myriads of sunbeams, whilst the azure effulgence above, purified, as with fire, from mist and vapour, set the picture in a frame of gold and ultramarine. Painful splendours! The men began to drop off. None but Hamdan had brought a calabash. Shaaban clamoured for water. Wazira and the four slave-boys retired to some puddle, a discovery which they wisely kept to themselves, leaving the rest of the party to throw themselves under tree and bush upon the hot ground.

As the sun sank westward, Wazira joined us with a mouthful of lies, and the straggling line advanced. Our purblind guide once more lagged in rear, yielding the lead to old Shaaban. This worthy, whose five wits were absorbed in visions of drink, strode blunderingly ahead, over the hills and far away. My Captain S------, keeping him in sight, and I in rear of both, missed the road. Shortly after sunset we three reached a narrow finmara, where stood delightful sight! some puddles bright with chickweed, and black with the mire below. We quenched our thirst, and bathed our swollen feet, and patted, and felt, and handled the water as though we loved it. But even this charming occupation had an end. Evidently we had lost our way. Our shots and shouts remained unanswered. It would have been folly to thread the thorny jungle by the dubious light of a young moon: we therefore kindled a fire, looked to our arms, lay down upon a soft sandy place, and, certain that Shaaban would be watchful as a vestal virgin, were soon lulled to sleep by the music of the night breeze, and by the frogs chanting their ancient querele upon the miry margins of the pools. That day's work had been little more than five leagues. But

"These high wild hills, and rough uneven ways,
Draw out the miles."

It seemed as though we had marched doubly as much; a circumstance which the African geographer would do well to note.

At dawn after our bivouac, we retraced our steps, and soon came upon our people. They had followed the upper or northern path, and had nighted near the higher bed of the finmara which gave us hospitality. The "Myuzi" is a rocky line about 20 feet broad, edged with thick trees, gummy acacias, wild mulberries, and wood-apples, and bearing traces of violent periodical torrents. Even in the driest season the sole preserves pools, sometimes 100 feet long; and by digging in the mud, water is always procurable. The banks conceal various antelopes and birds, especially doves, kites, and curlews, whilst around the water iguanas congregate to dine upon the small fish-fry which lie expiring with heat in the shallows.

After shaking hands all round and settling small disputes, we spread our beds in the grateful shade, and solaced the past with tea and tobacco. During the day our Belochies shaved one another's heads, and plaited sawás or sandals of palm-leaves. Our guide secured, as extra porters, five wild men, habited in primitive attire. Their only garment was a kilt of dried and split rushes or grass, with the upper ends woven into a cord of the same material. This thatch, fastened round the waist, extends to mid-thigh. It is clean, cool, and certainly as decent as the garb of the Gael. All had bows and poisoned arrows except one, who boasted a miserable musket, and literally a powder-horn, the vast spoils of a cow. The wretches were lean as wintry wolves, and not less ravenous. We fed them with rice and ghee. Of course they asked for more-till their stomachs, before like shrunken bladders, stood out in the shape of little round bumps from the hoopwork of ribs. We had neglected to take their arms. After feeding, they arose, and with small beady eyes, twinkling with glee, bade us farewell. Though starving, they would not work. A few hours afterwards, however, they found a hippopotamus in the open; killed it with their arrows, and soon left nothing but a heap of bones and a broad stain of blood upon the ground.

Having rested till 3:15 P.M., we persuaded, with the usual difficulty, our human cattle to load one another, and advance over a path dented by the wild buffalo's hoof. The rolling ground was a straggling thorn-jungle, studded with bright flowers. In places "black-jacks" were scattered about a plain fired to promote the growth of fodder; and ant hills, like Irish "fairy mounts" rose regularly as if disposed by the hand of art. Khombera's cone fell far behind. The walls of Sagama, whose peaks, smoking by day and burning at night, resembled volcanoes, changed their blue tints, first for brown, and then for distinct green. At length, emerging from the wood, we entered an alluvial plain, and sighted the welcome river, flashing bright through its setting of emerald trees, as it mirrored the westering orb of day. Traversing the tall rushes, young trees, and thick underwood of the bank, we found ourselves about sunset opposite Kohoday, the village of a friendly Mzegura chier. "Sultan Momba" having recognised the Belochies, forthwith donned his scarlet coat, superintended the launching of the village boat from its cadjan cover, stood surrounded by the elders watching our transit, and, as we landed, wrung our hands with rollicking greetings, and those immoderate explosive laughings which render the African family to all appearance so "jolly" a race.

The Thursday was a halt at Kohoday. It is the normal cultivators' village of these regions, built upon the high and stiff clay bank of the Pangany river, here called the Lufu, or Rufu. From without it has a charming look of seclusion and rural comfort. Rendered invisible, till near, by bosoming tree, bush, and speargrass, it is protected by a stout palisade of trunks. When foes and beasts abound, this defence is doubled and trebled. The entrances in the shape of low triangles, formed by inclining the posts en chevron, lead to a heap of wattle and dab-thatched huts; here square, there round; generally huddled together; but if space allow, scattered over a few hundred yards. Goats, sheep, and cows-they thrive beyond the coast-are stalled near or inside the human habitations. From the deep strong stream, red with hill-loam, and here about 80 yards wide, a bathing-place is staked off against the alligator and the hippopotamus. Our Belochies, who, like all Orientals, believe that drinking the element at night weakens digestion, make of this an exception; and my companion, an old Himalayan, thought that he could detect in it the peculiar rough smack of snow-water.

These villagers are cultivators. Formerly tame, harmless, heathen to all but one another, they have become masters of muskets, which they use, to spoil and oppress those who have them not. We were shown, on the mountain-pass of Usumbara, the watch-fire which is never extinguished; and the Mzegura chief, when supplying us with a bullock, poked his thumb back towards the hills, and said, with a roar of laughter, that already we had become the king's guests. Our Beloch guard applauded this kindred soul, patted him upon the shoulder, and declared that, with a score of men of war like themselves, he might soon become lord of all the mountains.

Sultan Momba once visited Zanzibar, where his eyes were opened to Keranie truth, by the healing hand of the Kazi Mukij el din. This distinguished Sawahili D. D. conferred upon the neophyte the name of Abdullah, and called him son. But the old Momba returned strong upon Abdullah when he sniffed once more his native air. He fell from prayer and ablution to the more congenial practices of highwaying and hard drinking. He is a stout, jolly, beardless young black, with a boatswain's voice, an infinite power of surprise, and an inveterate itching for beggary. This graceless youth inspected our weapons for hours, and sat with us half the day. At one time he begged for the Cold; at another for a barrel of gunpowder; now he wanted to garter slaves for ammunition; and when night fell, he privily sent Hamdan to request a bottle of brandy. All these things were refused, and Sultan Momba was fain to be content with two caps, a pair of muslins, and a cotton shawl. He seriously advised us to return with twenty barrels of gunpowder, which, as the article was in demand, would bring, he assured us, excellent business. Our parting was pathetic. He swore he loved us, and promised, on our return, the boat to conduct us down the river; but when we appeared with empty hands, he told the truth, namely, that it is a succession fo Falls and Rapids.

After a night in which the cimex betularius had by a long chalk the advantage of the drowsy god, on the 13^th of February we were ferried across the stream, attended by divers guides from Sultan Momba's village. At 7 A.M., emerging from the thicket, we fell into the beaten track over the alluvial plain, which here, as at Chogway, must, during rains, be a sheet of water. We crossed the Luangus, a deep silent affluent of the Lufu river, by a bridge composed of a fallen tree. Then stretching over the grassy expanse, we skirted twp small cones, "Ngua," the roots of the high Vingiri range. Like Sagama, this bulwark of Usumbara is a mural precipice, with bluff sides of rock, well wooded on the summit, and looking a proper place for ibex. It forms the rampart or escarpment separating the "Mrime" landward from the southern river-plain. The people assured us that the rolling surface above supports an abundant population of Washenzy, clients and serfs to Sultan Kimwere's clan.

We then entered upon cultivated ground, which seemed a garden after the red waste below Tongway. Coeos and tall trees concealed the stream, which, above its junction with the Luangua, is a mere mountain-torrent, roaring down a rocky tortuous bed, and forming green-tufted islets, which are favourite sites for settlements. Our guides presently took leave, pretexting a blood-feud with the neighbouring villages. The people, as we passed by, flocked over their rude bridges, a floor of narrow planks laid horizontally upon rough coco-piers, forked upright, planged a few feet apart, parapeted with rough basketwork, and sometimes supplied with knotty fibrous creepers to stay the travellers' steps. These the number and daring of the alligators render necessary. Artless constructions, they are the puentes de cimbra of Chili, and much resemble the bridges of inner Devonshire during the days of our grandfathers. Cows, goats, and long-tailed sheep clustered upon the plains. Halting for the noon under a spreading tamarind, we were surrounded by crowds, who feasted their eyes upon us for hours together. They were unarmed, dressed in hides, spoke the Kizegura dialect, which differs greatly from Kisawahili, and appeared rather timid than dangerous. The Sultan of the Zafura village, near which we reposed, stalked about, spear in hand, highly offended by our not entering his hut; and some Sawahilis in red caps looked daggers at the white strangers. We tried to hire extra porters; but having no merikan (domestics), and no beads, we notably failed.

Presently black Nimbi capped the hill-tops, cooling the fierce Simum, and low thunders warned us forward. Resuming our march at 3:30 P.M., we crossed a dry finmara, treadint towards the Lufu; traversed a hill-spur of rolling and thorny red ground, to avoid a deep bend in the stream; passed a place where the divided waters, apparently issuing from a wooded rock, foam over the jagged incline; and at 5 P.M., passing two bridges, we entered Msiky Mguru, a Wazegura village distant twelve miles from Kohoday. It is a cluster of hay-cock huts, touching one another, built upon an island formed by divers rapid and roaring branches of the river. The headman was sick, but we found a hospitable reception. Uninitiated in the African secret of strewing ashes round the feet of the Kitandah or Cartel, although eschewing the dirty smoky huts, we spent our night with ants, and other little murderers of sleep which shall be nameless. Our hosts expressed great alarm about the Masai. It was justified by the sequel. Scarcely had we left the country when a plundering party of wild spearmen attacked two neighbouring villages, slaughtered the hapless cultivators, and with pillage and pollage drove off the cows in triumph. They watched with astonishment the magical process of taking an altitude of Canopus, and were anxious to do business in female slaves, honey, goats, and sheep. Some of the girls were rather comely: they did not show the least fear or shame.

At sunrise on the next morning we resumed our march, following the left bank of the river, which is here called Kirna. For about three miles it is a broad line of flat boulders, thicket, sedge, and grass, with divers trickling rivulets between. At the Maurwi village, the branches anastomoze, forming a deep and strong but navigable stream, about thirty yards broad, and hedged with masses of vegetation. Thence we turned northward, over rolling red clay, here cultivated, there a thorny jungle, in the direction of Tamota, another mural precipice and bluff headland in the hill curtain of Usumbara. The paths were crowded with a hide-clad and grass-kilted race, chiefly women and small girls, who, by the by, displayed very precocious developments, leading children each with a button of hair left upon its scraped crown. The adults, laden with manive, holcus, and maize, poultry, sugar-cane, and waterpots with bunches of leaves to prevent splashing, were pumpkins and plantains-here their own land begins-were bound for a Golio, or market held in an open plain. None evinced fear of a white face; but when our Belochies asked the fair how they would like us for husbands, they simply replied, "Not at all." The men chip their teeth to points, and, as in Usumbara, punch out in childhood one incisor of the lower jaw: a piece of dried rush or sugarcane distends the ear-lobe to an unsightly size. All carried bows and arrows. Some shouldered such hoes and hatchets as English children use upon the sands: here bounteous earth, fertilised by the rains of heaven, requires the mere scratching of a man's nails. Others led stunted pariah dogs adorned with leather collars: they are prime favourites with the savages, who hold a stew of puppies, as amongst us in the days of Charles the Second, a dish fit for a monarch. In West Africa also the meat is admired, and some missionaries have described it as "very sweet." The salutations of these savages provoked the wrath of Seedy Bombay. Acquaintances stood afar off and nosed forth hem and hum till they relieved their minds. None, even the women, refused to greet us; and at times Yambo, "the state!" was uttered simultaneously by a score of sable lips.

Having duly stared and been stared at, we unloaded for rest at 9:30 A.M. under a spreading tree, near the large double-fenced village of Paslunga belonging to one of Sultan Kimwere's multitudinous sons. Again clouds obscured the air, and thunder growled over the near hills. It became evident that the wet season was fast approaching.

The coolness of the air drew cries of "Safar! Safar!"-let us march!-from the Belochies. At 1:20 P.M. we resumed our way, and presently passed on the left hand a tank of mire and water, thinly sprinkled with paddy-birds, sandpipes, and Egyptian geese, exceedingly wild. Hornbills screamed upon the neighbouring trees, and on the mud my companion shot a specimen of the gorgeous crested crane, whose back-feathers would have made fine bonnets. After an hour's march we skirted a village, where the people peremptorily ordered us to halt. We attributed this annoyance to Wazira, who was forthwith visited with a general wigging. It is, however, partly the custom of the country. Man here claims a right to hear news, the pabulum which his soul loves, from his neighbour. To coin the most improbable nonsense, to be told lies, and to retell lies, are the mental luxuries of idle men, equally the primum mobile of a Crimean "shave" and of an East African palaver. But the impending rain sharpened our tempers; we laughed in the faces of our angry expostulators, and bidding them stop us if they could, pursued our road.

Presently ascending a hill, and turning abruptly to the north-east, we found ourselves opposite, and about ten miles distant from a tall azure curtain, the mountains of Fuga. Below, the plain was populous with hay-cock villages. Tall tamarinds, the large-leaved plantain, and the parasol-shaped papaw, grew wild amongst the thorny trees. Water stood in black pools, and around it waved luxuriant sugar canes. In a few minutes every mouth in the party was tearing and chewing at a long pole. This cane is of the edible kind: the officinal varieties are too luscious, cloying, and bilious, to be sucked with impunity by civilised men. After walking that day sixteen miles, at about 4 P.M. a violent storm of thunder, lightning, and raw south-west wind, which caused the thermometer to fall many degrees and the slaves to shudder and whimper, drove us back into the Bandany or Palaver-house of a large village. It consisted only of a thatch roof propped by rough uprights. The inside was half-mud half-mould; the only furniture stone slabs, 'used as hones; and hollowed logs once beehives and now seats. The place swarmed with flied and mosquitos. We lighted fires to keep off fevers. Our Belochies, after the usual wrangle about rations, waxed melancholy, shook their heads, and declared that Kusy, or a wet monsoon, had set in.

If the 15^th of February dawned with one of those steady little cataclysms, which, to be seen advantageously, must be seen near the Line. At 11 A.M. weary of the steaming Bandany, our men, loaded, and in a lucid interval, set out towards the Fuga hills. As we approached them, the rain shrank to a spitting, gradually ceased, and was replaced by that reeking fetid sepulchral heat which travellers in the tropics know and fear. The path lay over the usual red clay; crossed low ground, where trees decayed in stagnant water, and spanned a cultivated black plain at the foot of the mountains, with a vista of far blue hill on the right. We rested a few minutes before attempting the steep incline before us. The slippery way had wearied our slaves, though aided by three porters hired that morning; and the sun, struggling through vapours, was still hot enough to overpower the whole party.

At 1 P.M. we proceeded to breast the pass. The path began, gently rising over decayed foliage, amongst groves of coarse bananas, whose leaves of satiny lustre, shredded by the winds, hid large bunches of green fruit. The musa is probably an aboriginal of East Africa: it grows, I am told, almost spontaneously upon the shores of the far inner lakes. Here the fruit, which, maturing rapidly, affords a perennial supply, is the staff of savage life. As usual when men are compelled to utilise a single object, they apply the plantain to various purposes. Even the leaves are converted into spoons, plates, and even bottles. They are also made into thatch, fuel, and a substitute for wrapping-papers. Never transplanted, and the rotation of crops being unknown, this banana has now degenerated.

Issuing from the dripping canopy, we followed a steep goat-track, forded a crystal burn, and having reached the midway, sat down to enjoy the rarified air, and to use the compass and spyglass. The view before us was extensive, if not beautiful. Under our feet the mountains fell in rugged folds, clothed with plantain fields, wild mulberries, custard apples, and stately trees, whose lustrous green glittered against the ochreous ground. The salsaparilla vine hung in clusters from the supporting limbs of the tamarind, the toddy palm raised its fantastic arms over the dwarf coco, and bitter oranges mingled pleasant scent with herbs not unlike mint and sage. Below, half veiled by rank streams, lay the yellow Nika or Wazegura wilderness, traversed by a serpentine of trees denoting the course of the Mkomafi affluent. Three cones, the "Mbara Hills," distant about eight miles, crowned the desert. Far beyond we could see the wellwooded ling of the Lufu river, and from it to walls of the southern and western horizon stretched a uniform purple plane.

We were startled from rest by a prodigious hubbub. The three fresh porters positively refused to rise unless a certain number of cloths were sent forward to propitiate the magnates of Fuga. This was easily traced to Wazira, who received a hint that such trifling might be dangerous. He had been lecturing us all that morning upon the serious nature of our undertaking Sultan Kimwere was a potent monarch-not a Momba. His "ministers" and councillors would, unless well paid, avert from us their countenances; we must enter with a discharge of musketry to awe the people, and by all means do as we are bid. The Belochies smiled contempt and, pulling up the porters, loaded them, deaf to remonstrances.

Resuming our march after a short halt, we climbed rather than walked, with hearts beating from such unusual exercise, up the deep zigzag of a torrent. Villages then began to appear perched like eyries upon the hill-tops, and the people gathered to watch our approach. At 4 P.M. we found ourselves upon the summit of a ridge. The Belochies begged us to taste the water of a spring hard by. It was icy cold, with a perceptible chalybeate flavour, sparkled in the cup, and had dyed its head with rust. East Africa is a "land whose stones are iron," and the people declare that they have dug brass.

We now stood upon the mountains, but we found no table-land. The scenery reminded my companion of Almnah, one of the Blue mountains in Southern India. There were the same rounded cones, tapestried with velvety grass, and ribboned with paths of red clay; the same Sholahs or gloomy forest-patches clothing the slopes; the same emerald swamps, through which transparant runnels continually trickle, and little torrents and rocky linns. This granite and sandstone heap has, however, a double aspect; the northern and eastern slopes are bluff and barren, whilst the southern and western abound in luxuriant vegetation. The reeking plains westward are well wooded. We were shown the "water of Masinde," a long narrow tank, upon whose banks elephants are said to exist. North-westward the mountains rise apparently higher and steeper, till about ten miles further west, where, capped with cloud-heaps, the giant flanks of Mukumbara bound the view. We stood about four thousand feet above the sea-level, distant thirty-seven files from the coast, and seventy-four or seventy-five along the winding river. There is a short cut from Kohoday across the mountains; but the route was then waterless, and the heat would have disabled our Belochies.

After another three-mile walk along the hill flanks, we turned a corner ans suddenly sighted, upon the opposite summit of a grassy cone, an unfenced heap of hay-cock huts-Fuga. As we drew near, our Belochies formed up and fired a volley, which brought the hind and his wife, and his whole meine, out of the settlement. This being one of the cities where ingress is now forbidden to strangers, we were led by Wazira through timid crowds that shrank back as we approached, round and below the cone to four tattered huts, which superstition assigns as the "travellers' bungalow." Even the son and heir of great Kimwere must abide here till the lucky hour admits him to the presence and the imperial city. The cold rain and sharp rarified air rendering any shelter acceptable, we cleared the huts of sheep and goats, housed our valuables, and sent Seedy Bombay to the Sultan, requesting the honour of an interview.

Before dark appeared three bare-headed mdue, or "ministers," who in long, palaver declared that council must squat upon two knotty points-Primo, Why and wherefore we had entered the country viâ the hostile Wazegura? Secundo, What time might be appointed by his majesty's Mganga, or medicine-man, for the ceremony. Sharp-witted Hamdan at once declared us to be European wizards, and waganga of peculiar power over the moon and stars, the wind and rain. Away ran the ministers to report the wonder. Whilst they are absent, I will briefly explain what a Mganga is.

The Maganga, who is called by the Arabs Tahib, or doctor, and by us priest, physician, divine, magician, and medicine-man, combines, as these translations show, priestly with medical functions. He may be considered the embryo of a sacerdotal order amongst the embryo communities of savage tribes. Siberia has Shamans, and Greenland Angekoks, Guiana her Peimans, and the North Americans their mystery-men; the Galla believes in his Kaleshah, the Kru Republic in her Deyabos; the West African negro in his Grugru or Fetiss seers, and the Cape Kaffirs in witch doctors, the great originators of all our troubles. Rain-charming is the popular belief of Africa, from Zanzibar to the Kru coast. It is not confined to these barbarous lands. In Ireland, the owner of a four-leaved shamrock can cause or stop showers; and the Fins on board our ships deal with the clerk of the weather for fair wind. The Indian Yogi, the Bayragi, and the Stia Rami have similar powers. I heard of a man at Porebunder, who, when torrents of rain injured the crops, was threatened by his Rajah with a "cotton coat;" that is to say, a padded poncho, well oiled and greased, girt closely round him, and set on fire. In East Africa, from the Simuli country southwards, the rains which appear so wearisome to the traveller are a boon to the savage, who, during droughts, sees his children and cattle perish of hunger and thirst. The demand produces a supply of intellectuals who, for the consideration of idle life, abundant respect, and food with out toil, boldly assert command over the clouds. It is easy to predict rain in these regions. The incantation is delayed till mists gather upon the mountain-tops, and the fetiss is finished as the shower begins to fall. Success brings both solid pudding and empty praise; failure, the trifling inconvenience of changing air.

The Mganga has various other duties. He must sprinkle the stranger with blood of sheep and medicines, the aspersory being a cow's tail. Upon the departing guest he gently spits, bidding him go in God's peace. During sickness he must dispose of the ghost or haunting fiend. He marks ivory magically, to insure its reaching the coast in safety. If the Sultan loses health, he fixes upon the bewitcher; and unless duly fee'd, shoves into his mouth a red-hot hatched, which has no power to burn innocence. The instrument of his craft is a bundle of small sticks. Thrown upon the ground, they form the divining figures; hence the Arabs translate Uganga, "the art," by Raml or Geomancy. Most of these men are open to the persuasions of cloth and beads. One saw the spirit of a white-face sitting in a chair brought as a present to his chief, and broadly insinuated that none but the wise deserved such chair. But let not the reader suppose that all are pure imposters; like supernaturalists in general, they are half deceived and half deceivers. Like the most of mankind, they are partly fools and partly knaves. There is, indeed, no folly conceivable by the mind of man in which man has not firmly and priosly believed. And when man lays down life in testimony to his belief, the act rather argues the obstinacy of the martyr than proves the truth of his tenets.

At 6 P.M. the ministers ran back and summoned us to the "Palace." They led the way through rain and mist to a clump of the usual huts, half hidden by trees, and overspreading a little eminence opposite to and below Fuga. We were allowed but three Belochies as a tail. Their matchlocks were taken away, and a demand was made for our swords, which of course we insisted upon retaining.

Sultan Kimwere half rose from his cot as we entered, and motioned us to sit upon dwarf stools before him. He was an old, old man, emaciated by sickness. His head was shaved, his face beardless, and wrinkled like grandam's; his eyes were red, his jaws disfurnished, and his hands and feet were stained with leprous spots. The royal dress was a Surat cap, much the worse for wear, and a loinwrap as tattered. He was covered with a double cotton-cloth, and he rested upon a Persian rug, apparently coeval with himself. The hut appeared that of a simple cultivator, but it was redolent of dignitaries, some fanning the Sultan, others chatting, and all holding long-stemmed pipes with small ebony bowls. Our errand was inquired, and we were welcomed to Fuga. As none could read the Sazzid of Zanzibar's letter, I was obliged to act secretary. The Centagenarian had heard of our scrutinising stars, stones, and trees; he directed us at once to compound a draught which would restore him to health, strength, and youth. I replied that our durgs had been left at Pangany. He signified that we might wander about the hills and seek the plants required. After half an hour's conversation, Hamdan being interpreter, we were dismissed with a renewal of welcome. On our return to the hovels, the present was forwarded to the Sultan with the usual ceremony. We found awaiting us a fine bullock, a basketful of sima-young Indian corn pounded and boiled to a thick hard paste; and balls of unripe bananas, peeled and mashed up with sour milk. Our Belechies instantly addressed themselves to the making of beef, which they ate with such a will, that unpleasant symptoms presently declared themselves in camp. We had covered that day ten miles-equal, perhaps, to thirty in a temperate climate. The angry blast, the groaning trees, and the lashing rain, heard from within a warm hut, affected us pleasurably. We slept the sweet sleep of travellers.

Chapter VII.-Return to Zanzibar.

----"Wasteful, forth
Walks the dire power of pestilent disease
A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,
Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe
And feeble desolation, casting down
The towering hopes, and all pride of man."

----The Seasons.

The African traveller, in this section of the nineteenth century, is an animal overworked. Formerly the reading public was satisfied with dry details of mere discovery-was delighted with a few latitudes and longitudes. Of late, in this, as in other pursuits, the standard has been raised. Whilst marching so many piles per diem, and watching a certain number of hours per noctem, the traveller, who is in fact his own general, adjutant, quarter-master, and executive, is expected to survey and observe-to record meteorology, hygrometry, and hypsometry-to shoot and stuff birds and beasts, to collect geological specimens, to gather political and commercial information, to advance the infant study ethnology, to keep accounts, to sketch, to indite a copious legible journal, to collect grammars and vocabularies, and frequently to forward long reports which shall prevent the Royal Geographical Society napping through evening meetings. It is right, I own, to establish a high standard which insures some work being done; but explorations should be distinguished from railway journeys, and a broad line drawn between the feasible and the impossible. The unconscionable physicist now deems it his right to complain, because the explorer has not used his theodolite in the temple of Mecca, and introduced his sympiosometer within the walls of Harar. An ardent gentleman once requested me to collect beetles, and another sent me excellent recipes for preserving ticks.

These African explorations are small campaigns, in which the traveller, unaided by discipline, is beset by all the troubles, hardships, and perils of savage war. He must devote himself to feeding, drilling, and directing his men to the use of arms and the conduct of a caravan, rather than the study of infusoria and barometers. The sight of an instrument convinces barbarians that the stranger is bringing down the sun, stopping rain, causing death, and bewitching the land for ages. Amidst utter savagery such operations are sometimes possible; amongst the semi-civilised they end badly. The climate also robs man of energy as well as health. He cannot, if he would, colect ticks and beetles. The simplest geodesical labours, as these pages will prove, are unadvisable. My companion has twice suffered from taking an altitude. Why is not a party of physicists sent out to swallow the dose prescribed by them to their army of martyrs?

The rainy monsoon had set in at Fuga. Heavy clouds rolled up from the south-west, and during our two days and nights upon the hills the weather was a succession of drip, drizzle, and drench. In vain we looked for a star; even the sun could not disperse the thick raw vapours that rose from the steamy earth. We did not dare to linger upon the mountains. Our Belochies were not clad to resist the temperature-here 12 lower than on the coast; the rain would make the lowlands a hotbed of sickness, and we daily expected the inevitable "seasoning-fever." In the dry monsoon this route might be made practicable to Chbaga and Kilimangaro. With an escort of a hundred musketeers, and at an expense of £600, the invalid who desires to avail himself of this "sanitarium," as it is now called by the Indian papers, may, if perfectly sound in wind, limb, and digestion, reach the snowy region, if it exists, after ten mountain-marches, which will not occupy more than a month.

Finding an impossibility of geographical study in Usumbara, we applied ourselves to gathering general information. Sultan Kimwere, I was told, is the fourth of a dynasty of Tondeurs and Ecorcheurs, originally from Nguru, a hilly region south of the river. His father, Shabugah, pushed the Usumbara frontier from pare to the sea, and the division of his dominions caused bloodshed amongst his successors. Kimwere, in youth a warrior of fame, ranked in the triumvirate of mountain-kings above Bana Rongua of Chhaga, and Bana Kizunga of the Wakuafy. In age he has lost ground. His sister's sons, chiefs of Maihi, a hilly province north-east from Fuga, rebelled, destroyed his hosts by rolling down stones, and were reduced only by the aid of twenty Belochies. He has a body-guard of four hundred musketeers, whom he calls his Waengrezy, or Englishmen. They are dispersed among the villages, for now the oryxhorn is silent, and the watch-fire is never extinguished upon the mountain-pass. This "Lion of the Lord," in these days, asserts kinghood but in one point: he has three hundred wives, each surrounded by slaves, and portioned with a hut and a plantation. His little family amounts to between eighty and ninety sons, some of whom have Islamised, whilst their sire remains a "pragmatical pagan." The Lion's person is sacred; even a runaway slave saves life by touching royalty. Presently he will die, be wrapped up in matting, and placed sitting-wise under his deserted hut, a stick denoting the spot. Dogs will be slaughtered for the funeral-feast, and Muigni Khatib will rule in his stead, and put to death all who dare, during the two months of mourning, to travel upon the king's highway.

Meanwhile Sultan Kimwere rules at home like a right kingly African king, by selling his subjects-men, women, and children, young and old, gentle and simple, individually, or, when need lays down the law, by families and by villages. Death, imprisonment, and mutilation are foreign pieces of state machinery, and rare. Confiscation and sale are indigenous and frequent. None hold property without this despot's permission; and, as we had an opportunity of seeing, the very "ministers" dare not openly receive presents. In a land where beads are small change, and sheeting and "domestics" form the higher specie, revenue is thus collected. Cattle-breeders offer the first fruits of flocks and herds; elephant-hunters every second tusk; and traders a portion of their merchandise. Cultivators are rated annually at ten measures of grain. This accounts for the exportation from Tanga and Pangany to Zanzibar, and even Arabia. The lion's share is reserved for the royal family; the crumbs are distributed to the councillors and the Waengrezy.

The headquarter village of Usumbara is Fuga, a heap of some 3000 souls. It is defenceless, and composed of the circular abodes common from Harar to Timbuctoo. Frameworks of concentric wattles, wrapped with plantain-leaves, are fastened to little uprights, and plastered internally with mud. A low solid door acts also as a window, and the conical roof is supported by a single central tree. A fireplace of stones in the middle distributes smoke as well as heat. In some homesteads the semicircle farther from the entrance is filled by a raised framework of planks, forming a family bedstead, and a few have over it a kind of second halfstory, like a magnified bunk.

The population of Usumbara is abundantly leavened with Arab blood; it thrives, to judge from the lodges capping every hill, and from the children, who apparently form more than the normal fifth. The snowy heads of the elders prove that we are still in the land of Macrobian Ethiopians-men who die of old age! The Wasumbara, who, though of light-brown colour, are short, stout, and plain, file their teeth to points, and brand a circular beauty-spot in the mid-forehead; their heads are shaven, their feet bare, and, except talismans round the neck, wrists, and ankles, their only wear is a sheet over the shoulders, and a rag or hide round the loins. A knife is stuck in the waist-cord, and men walk abroad with pipe, bow, and quiverless arrows. The women are adorned with charm-bags; and collars of white beads-now in fashion throughout this region-from three to four pounds weight, encumber the shoulders of a "distinguished person." Their body-dress is the African sheet bound tightly under the arms, now in fashion throughout this region-from three to four pounds weight, encumber the shoulders of a "distinguished person." Their body-dress is the African sheet bound tightly under the arms, and falling to the ankles. The Wasumbara of both sexes are comparatively industrious. The husband and children work in the fields, or graze their cattle when the sun has dried up the dew. Toward evening, they are penned in the yard, and the younglings are stowed away within the hut. Sometimes they employ themselves in running down the little deer, and throwing sticks at the guinea-fowls. To the goodwife's share fall the labours of cleaning the pen, fetching wood and water, pounding maize in a large tree-mortar, baking plantain-bread, and carrying the baby. Meat is considered a luxury. The cattle want the enlarged udder, that unerring sign of bestial civilisation. An English cow will produce as much as half-a-dozen of them. This deficiency of milk in pastoral lands often excites the traveller's wonder. At times he cannot buy a drop, "even for medicine." Neither barbarians nor their cattle can attain regularity of supply, which is perhaps the best test of refinement. With quiet consciences and plenty of good tobacco, the Wasumbara are yet a moody, melancholy race; the effect, probably, of their cold mountain air. A timid, dismal, and ignoble race are these "children of the mist;" as, indeed, are for the most part those savages who have changed pastoral for agricultural pursuits.

On Monday, the 16^th February, we took leave of, and were duly dismissed by, Sultan Kimwere. The old man, however, was mortified that our rambles had not produced a plant of sovereign virtue against the last evil of life. He had long expected a white mganga, and now two had visited him, to depart without even a trial! I felt sad to see the wistful lingering look with which he accompanied "kuahery"-farewell! But his case was far beyond my skill.

With infinite trouble we set out at 7 A.M. on the next day. The three porters whom we had engaged, characteristically futile, had run away without even claiming their hire. None of Sultan Kimwere's men dared to face the terrible Wazegura. The Belochies had gorged themselves faint with beef; and the hide, the horns, and collops of the raw meat were added to the slaves' loads. We descended the hills in a scotch mist and drizzle, veiling every object from view. It deepened into a large-dropped shower upon the fetid low-lands. That night slept at Pasunga; the next at Msiky Mguru; and the third, after marching seventeen miles-our greatest distance-at Koboday. The graceless Momba received us scurvily. We had neither caps nor muslins, consequently the village-boat remained under its cadjan cover, and we were punted over by a slave on a bundle of coco fronds, to the imminent peril of our chronometers.

We now resolved to skirt the river downwards, and to ascertain the truth concerning its Falls and Rapids. At dawn, Wazira came from our party, who had halted on the other side of the stream, and warned us that it was time to march; yet 9 A.M. passed by before the ragged line began to stretch over the plain. Our Belochies declared the rate of marching excessive; and Hamdan, who personified "Master Shoetie, the great traveller," averred that he had twice visited the Lakes, but had never seen such hardships in his dreams.

Our route lay along the alluvial plain before travelled over. Instead, however, of turning towards the red waste, we pursued the river's left bank, and presently entered familiar land-broken ground, rough with stones and thorns. Wazira declared his life forfeited if seen by a Mzegura. With some toil, however, we coaxed him to courage, and joined on the way a small party bound for Pangany. At 1 P.M. we halted to bathe and drink, as it would be sometime before we should again sight the winding stream. During the storm of thunder and lightning which ensued, I observed that our savage companions, like the Thraciaus of old Herodotus, and the Bheels and Coulies of modern India, shot their iron-tipped arrows int the air. Such, perhaps, is the primitive paralonnerre, preserved traditionally from ages, long forgotten by man, when Franklin taught him to disarm the artillery of heaven. Through rain and sleet and numbing wind, we threaded by a goat-path the dripping jungle, and about 4 P.M. found ourselves opposite Kizanga, a large Wazegura village on the right bank of the river. The inhabitants crossed over their bridge with muskets and bows, and squatted down to feast their eyes. All, however, were civil, and readily changed cocos for tobacco. Here the Pangany is a strong stream, flowing rapidly through a rocky trough, between high curtains of trees and underwood. On both sides the hilly roots of Mount Tongway approach the bed, leaving narrow ledges, slippery with ooze and mire, overgrown with sedge and spear-grass, and sprinkled with troublesome thorn-trees. From Kizanga we followed the river by a vile footpath. The air was dank and oppressive; the clouds seemed to settle upon earth, and the decayed vegetation exhaled a feverish fetor. As we advanced, the roar of the swollen stream told of rapids, whilst an occasional glimpse through its green veil showed a reefous surface, flecked with white froth. Heavy numbi purpled the western skies, and we began to inquire of Wazira whether a village was at hand.

About sunset, after marching fifteen miles, we suddenly saw tall cocos-in these lands the "traveller's joy"-waving their feathery heads against the blue eastern firmament. Presently crossing a branch of the river by a long bridge, made rickety for ready defence, we entered, with a flock of homeward-bound goats, Kizungu, an island-settlement of Wazegura. The headmen, assembling, received us with some ceremony; introduced us into an emptied hut; and, placing cartels upon the ground outside, sat down, ringed by a noisy crowd for the customary palaver. This village, being upon the confines of civilisation, and excited by wars and rumours of wars, suggested treachery to experienced travellers. My companion and I fired our revolvers into trees, and carefully reloaded them for the public benefit. The sensation was such that we seized the opportunity of offering money for rice and ghee. No provision, however, was procurable. Our escort went to bet supperless; Hamdan cursing this "Safar khais"-Anglice, rotten journey; Rahmat beweeping his twisted mustaches; and Shaaban smoking like the chimney of a Hammam. Murad Ali had remained at Msiky Mguru to purchase a slave without our knowledge. A novice in such matters, he neglected to tie the man's thumb, and had the exquisite misery to see, in the evening after the sale, his dollars bolting at a pace that baffled pursuit. We should have fared meagrely had not one of the elders brought, after dark, a handful of red rice and an aged hen. This provant was easily despatched by three hungry men, of whom one was a Portuguese cook. We then placed our weapons handy, and were soon lulled to sleep, despite smoke, wet beds, and other plagues, by the blustering wind and the continuous pattering of rain.

At sunrise on Friday, the 20^th February, we were aroused by the guide; and, after various delays, found ourselves on the road about 7 A.M. This day was the reflection of the last march. Hills still girt the river, with black soil in the lower, and red clay in the upper, levels. The path was a mere line, foot-worn through thickety torrent-beds, thorny jungles, and tall grasses. At 9 A.M. we stood upon a distant eminence to admire the Falls of the Pangany River. Here the stream, emerging from a dense dark growth of tropical forest, hurls itself in three huge sheets, fringed with flashing foam, down a rugged wall of brown rock. Half-way the fall is broken by a ledge, whence a second leap precipitates the waters into the mist-veiled basin of stone below. These cascades must be grand during the monsoon, when the river, forming a single horse-shoe, acquired a volume and momentum sufficient to clear the step which divides the shrunken stream. Of all natural objects, the cataract most requires that first element of sublimity-size. Yet, as it was, this fall, with the white spray and bright mist, set off by black jungle, and a framework of slaty rain cloud, formed a picture sufficiently effective to surprise us.

As we journeyed onwards, the heat became intense. The nimbi hugged the mountain-tops. There it was winter; but the sun, whose beams shot stingingly through translucent air, parched the summer plains. At 10 A.M. our Belochies, clean worn out by famine and fatigue, threw themselves upon the bank of a broad and deep ravine, in whose sedgy bed a little water still lingered. Wild bees had built upon the trees, but none courted the fate of plundering bears. The jungle was rich in Abu Jahl's melon, the colocqnth; and the slaves gnawed the dried calabash pith. Half an hour's rest, a coco-nut each, a pipe, and, above all things, the spes fete's[sp], restored their vigour. We resumed our march over a rolling waste of green, enlivened by occasional glimpses of the river, whose very aspect cooled the gazer. Villages became frequent as we advanced, far distancing our Belochies. At 3 P.M., after marching fourteen miles, we sighted the snake-fence and the pent-houses of friendly Chogway.

The jemadar and his garrison received us with all the honours of travel, and admired our speedy return from Fuga. As at Harar, a visitor can never calculate upon prompt dismissal. We were too strong for force, but Sultan Kimwere has detained Arab and other strangers for a fort-night before his Mganga fixed a fit time for audience. Moreover, these walking journeys are dangerous in one point: the least acciddnt disables a party and accidents will happen to the best-regulated expeditions.

Our feet were cut by boots and shoes, and we had lost "leather" by chafing and sunburns. A few days' rest removed these inconveniences. Our first visit was paid to Pangany, where Said bin Salim, who had watched his charge with the fidelity of a shepherd's dog, received us with joyous demonstrations. The Portuguese boy, our companion, had escaped with a few sick headaches, and we found his confrere free from pangany fever. After spending a day upon the coast, we returned, provided with munitions de bouche, and other necessaries, to Chogway, and settled old scores with our escort. ⁽²⁵⁾ Then, as the vessel in which we were to cruise southward was not expected from Zanzibar till the 1^st March, and we had a week to spare, it was resolved to try a fall with Behemoth.

The hippopotamus, called by the Sawahilis "kiboko," and by the Arabs "bakar el khor," or the creek-bullock, resembles a mammoth pig with equine head, rather than horse or cow. He loves the rivers and inlets where fresh-water mingles with the briny tide. At dawn, retiring from land, he takes shelter in the deep pools, succeeding one another chaplet-wise in the streams. Some such place is termed by the natives his "house." This, in the presence of man, he will not leave, fearing to expose his person while passing over the dividing sand-ridges. When undisturbed, he may be seen plunging porpoise-like against the stream, or basking in shallow water, and upon the soft muy[sp] bank, or cooling himself under the dense mangroves, singly and in groups, with his heavy box-head resting upon a friend's broad stern. I have come upon him in these positions within sight of timber-boats, and women and children will bathe but a few yards from his haunts. Dozing by day, at night he wriggles up one of the many runs on the river-side, and wanders far to graze upon fat rich grass, and to plunder plantations of their grain. He is easily killed by the puny arrow on terra frima; in the water he is difficult to shoot, and scarcely possible to bag. He exposes only his eyes above the surface, and after a shot, will raise for hours nothing but a nostril, slipping down the moment he sights the enemy. Receiving a deathblow, he clings to the bottom, and reappears only when blown up by incipient decomposition. Without scouts watching the place, the body will rarely be found. According to these Africans, the smallest wound proves eventually fatal: the water enters it, and the animal cannot leave the stream to feed. The people of Mafijah secure him, I am told, by planting a sharp gag upright in his jaws opened wide for attack. The same tale is told concerning the natives of Kabylie and their lions. The cow is timid unless driven beyond endurance, or her calf be wounded. The bulls are more pugnacious, especially the black old rogues who, separating from the herd, live in solitary dudgeon. By such an one the great King Irenes probably met his death, and the Abyssinians still lose many a life. Captain Owen's officers, when ascending streams, saw their boats torn by behemoth's hard tusks; and in the Pangany, one "Sultan Momba," a tyrant thus dubbed by the Belochies in honour of their friend the Kohoday chief, delighted to upset canoes, and was once guilty of breaking a man's leg.

Behold us now, O brother in St Hubert, dropping down the stream in a "monoxyle," some forty feet long, at early dawn when wild beasts are tamest. The jemadar and his brogher, cloaked in scarlet, and armed with their slow matchlocks, sit on the stern; the polers, directed by our new woodman, Seedy Bombay, occupy the centre, and we take our station in the bows. Our battery consists of a shot gun for experiments, a Colt's rifle, and two "sinashers," each carrying a four ounce ball of hardened lead. As we approach the herds, whose crests, flanked with small pointed ears. Dot the memory surface, out boatmen indulge in such vituperations as "Mana marira!" O big belly!-and "Hanamka" O tailless one! In angry curiosity the bruits raise their heads, and expose their arched necks, shiny with trickling rills. My companion, a man of speculative turn, experiments upon the nearest optics with two barrels of grape and B. shot. The eyes, however, are oblique, the charge scatters, and the brute, unhurt, slips down like a seal. This will make the herd wary. Vexed by the poor result of our trial, we pole up the rippling and swirling surface, that proves the enemy to be swimming under water towards the further end of the pool. After a weary time he must rise and breathe. Our guns are at our shoulders. As the smooth water undulates, swells, and breaches a way for the large black head, eight ounces of led fly in the right direction. There is a splash-a struggle; the surface foams, and behemoth, with mouth bleeding like a gutterspout, rears, and plunges above the stream. Wounded near the cerebellum, he cannot swim straight. The Belochies are excited; Bombay punches on the boatmen, who complain that a dollar a-day does not justify their facing death. As the game rises, matchlocks bang. Presently the jemadar, wasting three balls-a serious consideration with your Oriental-retires from the field, as we knew he would, recommending the hippopotamus to us. At last a coup de grace speeds through the ear; the brute sinks, gore dyes the surface purple, and bright bubbles seethe up from the bottom. Hippo is dead. We wait patiently for his reappearance, but he appears not. At length, by peculiar good luck, Bombay's sharp eye detects an object some hundred yards down stream. We make for it and find our bag brought up in a shallow by a spit of sand, and already in process of being ogled by a large fish-hawk. The hawk suffers the penalty of impudence. We tow our defunct to the bank, and deliver it to certain savages, whose mouths water with the prospect of hippopotamus beef. At sundown they will bring to us the tusks and head picked clean, as a whistle is said to be.

The herd will no longer rise; they fear this hulking craft; we must try some "artful dodge." S------, accompanied by Bombay, who strips to paddle in token of hot work expected, enters into a small canoe, ties fast his shooting-tackle in case of an upset, and, whilst I occupy one end of the house, makes for the other. Whenever a head appear an inch above water, a heavy bullet "puds" into or near it; crimson patches adorn the stream; some die and disappear, others plunge in crippled state, and others, disabled from diving by holes drilled through their noses, splash and scurry about with curious snorts, caused by breath passing through the wounds. At last S----- ventures upon another experiment. An infant hippo, with an imprudence pardonable at his years, uprears his crest; off flies the crown of the kid's head. The bereaved mother rises for a moment, viciously regards my companion, who is meekly loading; snorts a parent's curse, and dives as the cap is being adjusted. Presently a bump, a shock, and a heave, send the little canoe's bows high in the air. Bombay, describing a small parabola in frog-shape, lands upon the enraged brute's back. S----- steadies himself in the stern, and as the assailant, with broad dorsum hunched up, and hogged like an angry cat, advanced for another bout, he rises and sends a bullet through her side. Bombay scrambles in, and, nothing daunted, paddles towards the quarry, of which nothing is visible but a long waving line of gore. With a harpoon we might have secured her; now she will feed the alligators or the savages. ⁽²⁶⁾

Our most successful plan, however, is to come. The Belochies have ceased firing, confessing their matchlocks to be "no good;" but they still take great interest in the sport, as Easterns will when they se work being done. They force the boatmen to obey us. S----- lands with the black woodman, carrying both "smasbers." He gropes painfully through Mangrove thicket, where parasitical oysters wound the legs with their sharp edges, and the shaking bog admits a man to his knees. After a time, reaching a clear spot, he takes up position behind a budh impeding the deepest water, and signals me to drive up the herd. In pursuit of them I see a hole bursting in the stream, and a huge black head rises with a snort and a spirit. "Momba! Momba!" shout the Belochies, yet the old rogue disdains flight. A cone from the Colt strikes him full in front of the ear; his brain is pierced; he rises high, falls with a crash upon the wave and all that flesh "cannot keep in a little life." Momba has for ever disappeared from the home of hippopotamus; never shall he break nigger's leg again. Meanwhile the herd, who, rubbing their backs against the great canoe, had retired to the other end of the pool, hearing an unusual noise, rise, as is their wont, to gratify a silly curiosity. My companion has two splendid standing shots, and the splashing and circling in the stream below tell the accuracy of his aim.

We soon learned the lesson that these cold-blooded animals may be killed with a pistol-ball, if hit in brain or heart; otherwise they carry away as much lead as elephants. At about ten A.M. we had slain six, besides wounding I know not how many of the animals. They might be netted, but the operation would not pay in a pecuniary sense: the ivory of small teeth, under 4 lb. each, is worth little. Being perpetually popgunned by the Belochies, they are exceedingly shy, and after an excess of bullying they shift quarters. We returned but once to this sport, finding the massacre monotonous, and such cynegetics about as exciting as partridge-shooting.

That partie concluded with a bathe in the Pangany, which here has natural "bowers for dancing and disport," fit for Diana and her train. About a dwarf creek, trees cluster on three sides of a square, regularly as if planted; and rope-like creepers bind together the supporting stems, and hang a curtain to the canopy of impervious sylvan shade. Our consumptive jemadar suffered severely from the sun; he still, however, showed some ardour for sport. " mixture of a lie," says Bacon bluntly, "doth ever add to pleasure." We could not but be amused by the small man's grandiloquent romancing. A hero and a Rustam, he had slain his dozens; men quaked to hear his name; his sword never fell upon a body without cutting it in twain; and, 'faith, had he wielded it as he did the tongue, the weapon would indeed have been deadly. He had told us at Pangany all manner of Cathaian tales concerning the chase at Chogway; and his friend, an old Mzegura woodman, had promised us elephants, wild buffaloes, and giraffes. When we pressed the point as a trial, the guide shirked: his son was absent, war raged in the clan, his family wanted provisions; he would ever come on the morrow. This convinced us that the tale of game in the dry season was apocryphal. Chogway then offered few attractions. On Thursday, the 26^th of February, we left "the Bazar." My companion walked to Pangany, making a route-survey, whilst I accompanied the jemadar and his tail in our large canoe.

For two days after returning to the coast we abstained from exercise. On the 3d we walked out several miles, in the hottest of suns, to explore a cavern, of which the natives, who came upon it when clearing out a well, had circulated the most exaggerated accounts. Captain S----- already complained of his last night's labour-an hour with the sextant upon damp sand, in the chilly dew. This walk finished the work. On entering the house, we found the Portuguese lad, who had accompanied us to Fuga, in a high fever. S----- was prostrated a few hours afterwards, and next day I followed their example.

As a rule, the traveller in these lands should avoid exposure and fatigue, beyond a certain point, to the very best of his ability. You might as well practise sitting upon a coal-fire as inuring yourself (which green men have attempted) to the climate. Dr. B., a Polish divine, who had taken to travelling at the end of a sedentary life, would learn to walk bare-headed in the Zanzibar sun: the result was a sun-stroke. Others have paced barefooted upon an exposed terrace, with little consequence but ulceration and temporary lameness. The most successful in resisting the climate are they who tempt it least; and the best training for a long hungry march is repose with good living. Man has then stamina to work upon; he may exist, like the camel, upon his own fat. Those who fine themselves down by exercise and abstinence before the march, commit the error of beginning where they ought to end.

Our attacks commenced with general languor and heaviness, a lassitude in the limbs, a weight in the head, nausea, a frigid sensation creeping up the extremities, and dull pains in the shoulders. Then came a mild cold fit, succeeded by a splitting headache, flushed face, full veins, vomiting, and an inability to stand upright. Like "General Tazo" of Madagascar, this fever is a malignant bilious-remittent. The eyes become hot, heavy, and painful when turned upwards; the skin is dry and burning, the pulse full and frequent, and the tongue furred; appetite is wholly wanting (for a whole week I ate nothing), but a perpetual craving thirst afflicts the patient, and nothing that he drinks will remain upon his stomach. During the day extreme weakness causes anxiety and depression; the nights are worse, for by want of sleep the restlessness is aggravated. Delirium is common in the nervous and bilious temperament, and if the lancet be used, certain death ensues; the action of the heart cannot be restored. The exacerbations are slightly but distinctly marked (in my own case they recurred regularly between two and three A.M. and P.M.), and the intervals are closely watched for administering quinine, after due preparation. This drug, however, has killed many, especially Frenchmen, who, by overdosing at a wrong time, died of apoplexy. Whilst the Persians were at Zanzibar, they besieged Colonel Hamerton's door, begging him to administer Warburg's drops, which are said to have a wonderful effect in malignant chronic cases. When the disease intends to end fatally, the symptoms are aggravated; the mind wanders, the body loses all power, and after, perhaps, an apparent improvement, stupor, insensibility, and death ensue. On the other hand, if yielding to treatment, the fever, about the seventh day, presents marked signs of abatement; the tongue is clearer, pain leaves the head and eyes, the face is no longer flushed, nausea ceases, and a faint appetite returns. The recovery, however, is always slow and dubious. Relapses are feared, especially at the full and change of the moon; they frequently assume the milder intermittent type, and in some Indians have recurred regularly through the year. In no case, however, does the apparent severity of the fever justify the dejection and debility of the convalescence. For six weeks, recovery is imperfect; the liver act with unusual energy, the stomach is liable to severe indigestion, the body is lean, and the strength well-nigh prostrated. At such times change of air is the best of restoratives: removal even to a ship in the harbour, or to the neighbouring house, has been found more beneficial than all the tonics and the preventives in the pharmacopoeia.

In men of strong nervous diathesis the fever leaves slight consequences, in the shape of white hair, boils, or bat toothaches. Others suffer severely from its secondaries, which are either visceral or cerebral. Some lose memory, others virility, others the use of a limb; many become def or dim-sighted; and not a few, tormented by hepatitis, dysentery, constipation, and similar disease, never completely recover health. The Arabs born upon the island, and the Banyans, rarely suffer severely during the fever, but many are laid up by its consequent "nazleli," or "defluxion of humours." Some Indian Moslems have fled the country, believing themselves bewitched. Many European residents at Zanzibar have never been attacked; but upon the coast, the experience of Captain Owen's survey, of the Mombas Mission, and of our numerous cruisers, proves that no European can undergo exposure and fatigue, which promote the overflow of bile, without under-going the "seasoning." It has, however, one advantage-those who pass the ordeal are acclimatised; even after a year's absence in Europe, they return to the tropics with little danger. The traveller is always advised to undergo his seasoning upon the coast before marching into the interior; but after recovery he must not await a second attack, otherwise he will expend, in preparation, the strength and bottom required for the execution of his journey. Of our party the Portuguese boy, who escaped at Pangany, came in for his turn at Zanzibar. The other has ever since had light relapses; and as a proof that the negro enjoys no immunity, Seedy Bombay is at this moment (8^th June) suffering severely.

We passed no happy time in the upper story of the Wali Meriko's house. Luckily for us, however, the master was absent at Zanzibar. The jemadar, seeing that he could do nothing, took leave, committing us to Allah and Said bin Salim. The Banyans intended great civility; they would sit with us for hours, asking, like Orientals, the silliest of questions, and thinking withal that they were "doing the agreeable." Repose was out of the question. During the day, flies and gnats added another sting to the mortifications of fever. At night, rats nibbled at our feet, mosquitoes sand their song of triumph, and a torturing thirst made the terrible sleeplessness yet more terrible. Our minds were morbidly fixed upon one point-the arrival of our vessel; we had no other occupation but to rise and gaze, and exchange regrets as a sail hove in sight, drew near, and passed by. We knew that there would be no failure on the part of our thoughtful friend, who had written to promise us a "Battela" on the 1^st of March. But we doubted the possibility of a Sawahili or an Arab doing anything in proper time. The vessel had been sent from Zanzibar before the end of February. The rascals who manned her, being men of Tumbatu, could not pass their homes unvisited; they wasted a precious week, and did not make Pangany till the evening of the 5^th March.

After sundry bitter disappointments, we had actually hired a Banyan's boat that had newly arrived, when the expected craft ran into the river. Not a moment was to be lost. Said bin Salim, who had been a kind nurse, superintended the embarkation of our property. My companion, less severely treated, was able to walk to the shore; but I-alas, for manliness!-was obliged to be supported like a bedridden old woman. The worst part of the process was the presence of a crowd. The Arabs were civil, and bade a kindly farewell. The Sawahili, however, audibly contrasted the present with the past, and drew dedecorous conclusions from the change which a few days had worked in the man who bore a 24 lb. gun-my pet 4-ounce.

All thoughts of cruising along the southern coast were at an end. Colonel Hamerton had warned us not to dispese bilious remittents; and evidently we should not have been justified in neglecting his caution to return whenever seized by sickness. With the dawn of Friday, the 6^th March, we ordered the men to up sail: we stood over for Zanzibar with a fine fresh breeze, and early in the afternoon we found ourselves once more within the pale of Eastern civilisation. Deo gratias! our excellent friend at once sent us to bed-whence, gentle reader, we have the honour to make the reverential salam.

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