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set for partridge, quail, &c.; and if intended for soaring birds, the noose is laid on the ground horizontally. The animals are struck with spears and killed, and are eaten by all; while the tendons are made into bowstrings, the horns used as charms, and the skins rudely dressed for wear.

Fish are rarely met with. On the coast, women standing in a circle up to their waists in the sea use their cloths as nets, and encircle small fish. Stakenets in the form of the letter U, turned in at the apices, were seen. In the interior, upon the clear, gravelbottomed river M'gazee, a party of fishers were seen wading down the stream, the men leading with handnets, while boys in their rear thrust spears into the holes in the banks. A number of slimy-looking fish, 18 to 20 inches long, had been caught, and were slung by their heads to a cord tied round the waist, surrounding the wearer like a Highland kilt.

The four native races were as follows:

I. The Wazaramo.-A smart, dressy (though nearly naked), well-to-do-looking people, with a most selfpossessed air, and fond of ornaments in beads, seashells, or tin. Their heads are covered with wool, elongated with bark fibre into hanks, and their bodies smeared with an oily pomade of red clay, which soon soils their only covering a cloth wrapped round the loins. The dress of the women is slightly longer, but they leave the neck and chest uncovered. Their arms are spears, and bows and arrows, with a few flint-guns. As they do not allow strangers to camp within their villages, we saw few houses, but those into which we were admitted were very tidy, with mud-and-wattle walls and thatched roofs. The appearance of these

WAZARAMO VILLAGERS.

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people was prepossessing. The attentions of the men to their women were very marked. A man might be seen in a field performing the office of hair-dresser to his lady-love; or, spear in hand, he would join a party of women going to draw water, pitcher on head, and escort them lest any of our camp should fall upon, steal, or seduce them away. A very pretty girl and her beau were coaxed to sit for their likenesses, and went away with a smile; but two hideous old women screeched at the pitch of their voices because they got but one necklace of beads as payment for sitting before the camera. This partly exhibits the boisterous nature of the people they killed a European named M. Maizan, and I have no doubt that it was only the warning guns fired by our Belooch guard every night that prevented an attack, for which, however, we were not unprepared.

The villagers en route turned out to see the white men; amongst them, during a single march, we saw two albinos, one of whom had black woolly hair. Again, of an afternoon, we considered it an extraordinary occurrence if our camp was not thronged by people, curious and well-conducted, some bringing their produce to barter. Women would sit at our tent-doors suckling their infants while cracking jokes at our expense. We saw no places of burial, but by the roadside the skeleton of a traveller lay; and also at other places single tombs, with large dolls of wood or some broken bowls of delf, standing as immortelles at one end of the graves, which were those of Seedees from Zanzibar. The only superstitious observance we noticed was in a field at the foot of a tree; a grass model of a hut was erected for the rain-god, as our

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men told me, and called, as usual, a "M'ganga." The worst features in this Wazaramo race are, that they will give travellers no aid, and will pounce upon stray men. They are polygamists; their only faith is belief in the "black art;" and though residing on the borders of civilisation, they have no curiosity or ambition.

II. The Wasagara population live such an outcast life on the tops of their conical hills, above the path of the traveller, that we saw little of their manners or customs. Parties from the coast attack them, to capture their people and cattle; and as we were considered of this class, our followers had great difficulty in getting supplies. We also suffered from a set of coast slavehunters, who gave orders that we were not to be supplied with anything, because we had come into the country to put down slavery. However, it being a sporting country, we were more or less independent. Guides were got with difficulty, but a short, sharp fellow took me over a very fine range of streambeds and shady spots for buffalo and rhinoceros, showing great cleverness and intelligence as a tracker. We met with nothing but beds of lilac convolvulus in the woods. My guide's chat, and his archery at a leaf ten paces off, beguiled the time very agreeably. He made me laugh at his sultan, Senga, who had fourteen wives; but he himself, he said, could not marry until his present wardrobe was increased, it consisting only of what he then wore-a rag round his loins.

III. The Wagogo.-We did not enter their oblong, walled villages, but I have a distinct and vivid recollection of the people. Among them were smart, wiry, active young fellows, who would make first-rate recruits. Their woolly hair, elongated by working into it

INQUISITIVENESS OF THE PEOPLE.

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hanks of bark fibre, flew in the air as they ran; beads were at times strung on, or an ostrich-feather waved about their heads; their ear-lobes were distended by a plug of wood, &c. Their arms were five-feet-long spears, knobsticks, and oblong shields of leather; dress generally a small loin-cloth. With a gourd cup they drew water from their wells and filled it into earthen "gurahs," similar to those in India. Women carried their children on their backs in a skin, with cross supporting-straps; and boys brought music out of a stringed bow attached to a gourd as sounding-board. We were so mobbed by the people in camp that a ring of rope had to be placed round our tents; but this only increased their inquisitiveness. When told to go away, and not keep peeping under the canvass of our closed-up tents, they laughed, telling us the ground we pitched upon was theirs, and that they could take our guns and property from us if they chose. A porter of ours accidentally broke one of their bows; this was immediately turned to account, and a demand made for something ten times its value. I shot a lizard at some curiously outcropping rocks, and was told I had hurt their feelings, and must pay for my folly. Previously to firing I had thought of the Indian superstition as to sacred spots and marks, and examined the place well; but seeing no trace of them, I reckoned this fine had no connection with any such traditions, but was knowingly imposed on us in the way of extortion. They told us we must not have lights out at night-alluding to Speke making his observations. Like all Africans, if they gave us any information a present had to follow. The settlement of the tax was a most harassing affair. The sultan, after receiving all

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he had demanded, said the cloths were not suitable to his rank-" you have better ones than you gave me, and my head wife must get some." In short, he so bullied us by threats of attack that our main stand-by of porters, 113 "Wezees," were frightened into the dastardly act of deserting us at the most critical part of the journey.

IV. Wanyamuezi.-The 115 porters we left the seaport with were of the class of the Wanyamuezi, and we had good opportunity for observing their habits and character. They were average-sized, slim-limbed negroes, many of them with handsome countenances and incisions of caste above the cheek-bones; they were dressed in goat-skins hanging loosely in their front from the right shoulder; most of them with a shabby small bow and a couple of arrows; a few of the better sort had flint-guns, which they carried awkwardly at the long "trail," and pointing to the men behind them.

They are frank and amiable on first acquaintance, eating or taking anything from your hand, singing the jolliest of songs with deep-toned choruses from their thick necks and throats, but soon trying to get the upper hand, refusing to make the ring-fence round camp, showing sulks, making halts, or going short marches, treating with perfect contempt any message sent them even to sit apart from your tent, as the smoke of their fires, the odour of their persons, and their total want of delicacy annoy you. All these grievances my companion bore with great patience, and often got the offenders into humour by suggesting a harangue at night, to be delivered by their captain. On an animal being cut up into shares one day, they so far forgot themselves as to dash

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