When lodgings in the kraal have been distributed, and the animals have been off-packed, and water has been brought from the pit or stream, all apply themselves to the pleasant toil of refection. Merrily then sounds the breathless chant of the woman pounding or rubbing down grain, the song of the cook, and the tinkle-tinkle of the slave’s pestle, as he bends over the iron mortar from which he stealthily abstracts the coffee. The fireplaces are three stones or clods, placed trivet-wise upon the ground, so that a draught may feed the flame, they are far superior to the holes and trenches of our camps and pic-nics. The tripod supports a small black earthen pot, round which the khambi or little knot of messmates perseveringly squat despite the stinging sun. At home where they eat their own provisions they content themselves with a slender meal of flour and water once a day. But like Spaniards, Arabs, and all abstemious races, they must “make up for lost time.” When provisions are supplied to them, they are cooking and consuming as long as the material remains; the pot is in perpetual requisition, now filled to be emptied, then refilled to be re-emptied. They will devour in three days the rations provided for eight, and then complain loudly that they are starved. To leave a favourable impression upon their brains, I had a measure nearly double that generally used, yet the perverse wretches pleading hunger, though they looked like aldermen by the side of the lean bony anatomies whom they met on the road, would desert whenever met by a caravan. After a time there will, doubtless, be a re-action; when their beards whiten they will indulge in the garrulity of age; they will recount to wondering youth the prodigality of the Muzungu, in filling them with grain, even during the longest marches, and they will compare his loads of cloth and beads with the half dozen “shaggy” cows and the worn-out hoes, the sole outfit for presents and provisions carried by caravans of “Young Africa.” If there be any delay in serving out provisions, loud cries of Posho! p’hamba!—rations! food!—resound through the camp; yet when fatigued, the porters will waste hours in apathetic idleness rather than walk a few hundred yards to buy grain. Between their dozen meals they puff clouds of pungent tobacco, cough and scream over their jungle-bhang, and chew ashes, quids, and pinches of red earth, probably the graves of white ants. If meat be served out to them, it is eaten as a relish; it never, however, interferes with the consumption of porridge. A sudden glut of food appears to have the effect of intoxicating them. The Arabs, however, avoiding steady rations, alternately gorge and starve their porters, knowing by experience that such extremes are ever most grateful to the barbarian stomach. The day must be spent in very idleness; a man will complain bitterly if told to bring up his pack for opening; and general discontent, with hints concerning desertion, will arise from the mortification of a muster. On such occasions he and his fellows will raise their voices,—when not half-choked by food—and declare that they will not be called about like servants, and crouch obstinately round the smoky fire, the pictures of unutterable disgust; and presently enjoy the sweet savour of stick-jaw dough and pearl-holcus like small shot, rat stews, and boiled weeds, which they devour till their “bulge” appears like the crop of a stuffed turkey. Sometimes when their improvidence has threatened them with a Banyan-day, they sit in a melancholy plight, spitefully smoking and wickedly eyeing our cooking-pots; on these occasions they have generally a goat or a bullock in store, and, if not, they finesse to obtain one of ours. I always avoid issuing an order to them direct, having been warned by experience that Kidogo or the Kirangozi is the proper channel; which sorely vexes Valentine and Seedy Bombay, whose sole enjoyment in life is command. I observed that when wanted for extra-work, to remove thorns or to dig for water, that the false alarm of Posho! (rations) summons them with a wonderful alacrity. Moreover, I remarked that when approaching their country and leaving ours—the coast—they became almost unmanageable and vice versâ as conditions changed.

My companion and I pass our day as we best can, sometimes in a bower of leafy branches, often under a spreading tree, rarely in the flimsy tent. The usual occupations are the diary and the sketch-book, added to a little business. The cloth must be doled out, and the porters must be persuaded, when rested, to search the country for rations, otherwise—the morrow will be a blank. When a bullock is killed one of us must be present. The porters receive about a quarter of the meat, over which they sit wrangling and screaming like hyænas, till a fair division according to messes is arrived at. Then, unless watched, some strong and daring hand will suddenly break through the ring, snatch up half a dozen portions and disappear at a speed defying pursuit; others will follow his example, with the clatter and gesture of a troop of baboons, and the remainder will retire as might be expected, grumbling and discontented. Dinner at 4 P.M. breaks the neck of the day. Provisions of some kind are mostly procurable, our diet, however, varies from such common doings as the hard holcus-scone, the tasteless bean-broth and the leathery goat-steak, to fixings of delicate venison, fatted capon, and young guinea-fowl or partridge, with “bread sauce,” composed of bruised rice and milk. At first the Goanese declined to cook “pretty food,” as pasties and rissoles, on the plea that such things were impossible upon the march; they changed their minds when warned that persistence in such theory might lead to a ceremonious fustigation. Moreover, they used to serve us after their fashion, with a kind of “portion” on plates; the best part, of course, remained in the pots and digesters; these, therefore, were ordered to do duty as dishes. When tea or coffee is required in a drinkable state, we must superintend the process of preparing it, the notions of the Goanese upon such subjects being abominable to the civilised palate. When we have eaten our servants take their turn; they squat opposite each other over a private “cooking-pot” to which they have paid unremitting attention; they stretch forth their talons and eat till weary, not satiated, pecking, nodding, and cramming like two lank black pigeons. Being “Christians,” that is to say, Roman Catholics, they will not feed with the heathenry, moreover a sort of semi-European dignity forbids. Consequently Bombay messes with his “brother” Mabruki, and the other slaves eat by themselves.

When the wells ahead are dry the porters will scarcely march in the morning; their nervous impatience of thirst is such that they would exhaust all their gourds, if they expected a scarcity in front, and then they would suffer severely through the long hot day. They persist, moreover, upon eating before the march, under the false impression that it gives them strength and bottom. In fact, whenever difficulties as regards grain or drink suggest themselves, the African requires the direction of some head-piece made of better stuff than his own. The hardships of the tirikeza have already been described: they must be endured to be realised.

Night is ushered in by penning and pounding the cows, and by tethering the asses—these “careless Æthiopians” lose them every second day,—and by collecting and numbering the loads, a task of difficulty where every man shirks the least trouble. When there has been no tirikeza, when provisions have been plentiful, and when there is a bright moonshine, which seems to enliven these people like jackals, a furious drumming, a loud clapping of hands, and a general droning song, summon the lads and the lasses of the neighbouring villages to come out and dance and “make love.” The performance is laborious, but these Africans, like most men of little game, soon become too tired to work, but not too tired to play and amuse themselves. Their style of salutation is remarkable only for the excessive gravity which it induces; at no other time does the East African look so serious, so full of earnest purpose. Sometimes a single dancer, the village buffoon, foots a pas seul, featly, with head, arms, and legs, bearing strips of hair-garnished cow-skin, which are waved, jerked, and contorted, as if dislocation had occurred to his members. At other times, a line or a circle of boys and men is formed near the fire, and one standing in the centre, intones the song solo, the rest humming a chorus in an undertone. The dancers plumbing and tramping to the measure with alternate feet, simultaneously perform a treadmill exercise with a heavier stamp at the end of every period: they are such timists, that a hundred pair of heels sound like one. At first the bodies are slowly swayed from side to side, presently as excitement increases, the exercise waxes severe: they “cower down and lay out their buttocks,” to use pedantic Ascham’s words, “as though they would shoot at crows;” they bend and recover themselves, and they stoop and rise to the redoubled sound of the song and the heel-music, till the assembly, with arms waving like windmills, assumes the frantic semblance of a ring of Egyptian Darwayshes. The performance often closes with a grand promenade; all the dancers being jammed in a rushing mass, a galop infernale, with the features of satyrs, and gestures resembling aught but the human. When the fun threatens to become too fast and furious, the song dies, and the performers, with loud shouts of laughter, throw themselves on the ground, to recover strength and breath. The greybeards look on with admiration and sentiment, remembering the days when they were capable of similar feats. Instead of “bravo,” they ejaculate “Nice! nice! very nice!” and they wonder what makes the white men laugh. The ladies prefer to perform by themselves, and perhaps in the East, ours would do the same, if a literal translation of the remarks to which a ball always gives rise amongst Orientals, happened by misfortune to reach their refined ears.

When there is no dancing, and the porters can no longer eat, drink, and smoke, they sit by their fires, chatting, squabbling, talking and singing some such “pure nectar” as the following. The song was composed, I believe, in honour of me, and I frequently heard it when the singers knew that it was understood. The Cosmopolitan reader will not be startled by the epithet “Mbaya,” or wicked, therein applied to the Muzungu. A “good white man,” would indeed, in these lands, have been held an easy-going soul, a natural, an innocent, like the “buona famiglia,” of the Italian cook, who ever holds the highest quality of human nature to be a certain facility for being “plucked without ’plaining,” and being “flayed without flinching.” Moreover, despite my “wickedness,” they used invariably to come to me for justice and redress, especially when proximity to the coast encouraged the guide and guards to “bully” them.

The Baloch and the sons of Ramji quarrel, yell, roar, and talk of eating—the popular subject of converse in these lands, as is beer in England, politics in France, law in Normandy, “pasta” at Naples, and to say no more, money everywhere—till a late hour. About 8 P.M., the small hours of the country, sounds the cry lala! lala!—sleep! It is willingly obeyed by all except the women, who must sometimes awake to confabulate even at midnight. One by one the caravan sinks into torpid slumber. At this time, especially when in the jungle-bivouac, the scene often becomes truly impressive. The dull red fires flickering and forming a circle of ruddy light in the depths of the black forest, flaming against the tall trunks and defining the foliage of the nearer trees, illuminate lurid groups of savage men, in every variety of shape and posture. Above, the dark purple sky, studded with golden points, domes the earth with bounds narrowed by the gloom of night. And, behold! in the western horizon, a resplendent crescent, with a dim, ash-coloured globe in its arms, and crowned by Hesperus, sparkling like a diamond, sinks through the vast of space, in all the glory and gorgeousness of Eternal Nature’s sublimest works. From such a night, methinks, the Byzantine man took his device, the Crescent and the Star.

The rate of caravan-marching in East Africa greatly varies. In cool moonlit mornings, over an open path, the Pagazi will measure perhaps four miles an hour. This speed is reduced by a quarter after a short “spurt,” and under normal, perhaps favourable, circumstances, three statute miles will be the highest average. Throughout the journey it is safe to reckon for an Indian file of moderate length—say 150 men—2·25 English miles, or what is much the same, 1·75 geographical miles per hour, measured by compass from point to point. In a clear country an allowance of 20 per cent, must be made for winding: in closer regions 40-50 per cent., and the traveller must exercise his judgment in distributing his various courses between these extremes. Mr. Cooley (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 6) a “resolute,” and I may add a most successful “reducer of itinerary distances,” estimates that the ordinary day’s journey of the Portuguese missionaries in West Africa never exceeded six geographical miles projected in a straight line, and that on rare occasions, and with effort only, it may have extended to 10 miles. Dr. Lacerda’s porters in East Africa were terrified at the thought of marching ordinarily 2·50 Portuguese leagues, or about 9·33 statute miles per day. Dr. Livingstone gives the exceedingly high maximum of 2·50 to 3 miles an hour in a straight line, but his porters were lightly laden, and the Makololo are apparently a far “gamer” race, more sober and industrious, than the East Africans. Mr. Petherick, H. M.’s Consul at Khartum, estimates his gangs to have marched 3·50 miles per hour, and the ordinary day’s march at 8 hours. It is undoubted that the negro races north of the equator far surpass in pedestrian powers their southern brethren; moreover the porters in question were marching only for a single day; but as no instruments were used, the average may fairly be suspected of exaggeration. Finally Mr. Galton’s observation concerning Cape travelling applies equally well to this part of Africa, namely, that 10 statute or 6 rectilinear geographical miles per diem is a fair average of progress, and that he does well who conducts the same caravan 1,000 geographical miles across a wild country in six months.

I will conclude this chapter with a succinct account of the inn, that is to say the village in East Africa.

The habitations of races form a curious study and no valueless guide to the nature of the climate and the physical conditions to which men are subject.

Upon the East African coast the villages, as has been mentioned, are composed of large tenements, oblongs or squares of wattle and dab, with eaves projecting to form a deep verandah and a thatched pent-roof, approaching in magnitude that of Madagascar.

Beyond the line of maritime land the “Nyumba” or dwelling-house assumes the normal African form, the circular hut described by every traveller in the interior: Dr. Livingstone appears to judge rightly that its circularity is the result of a barbarous deficiency in inventiveness. It has, however, several varieties. The simplest is a loose thatch thrown upon a cone of sticks based upon the ground, and lashed together at the apex: it ignores windows, and the door is a low hole in the side. A superior kind is made after the manner of our ancient bee hives; it is cup-shaped with bulging sides, and covered with neat thatch, cut in circles which overlap one another tile-fashion: at a distance it resembles an inverted bird’s nest. The common shape is a cylindrical framework of tall staves, or the rough trunks of young trees planted in the earth, neatly interwoven with parallel and concentric rings of flexible twigs and withies: this is plastered inside and outside with a hard coat of red or grey mud; in the poorer tenements the surface is rough and chinked, in the better order it is carefully smoothed and sometimes adorned with rude imitations of life. The diameter averages from 20 to 25, and the height from 7 to 15 feet in the centre, which is supported by a strong roof-tree, to which all the stacked rafters and poles converge. The roof is subsequently added, it is a structure similar to the walls, interwoven with sticks, upon which thick grass or palm-fronds are thrown, and the whole is covered with thatch tied on by strips of tree-bark. It has eaves which projecting from two to six feet—under them the inhabitants love to sit or sun shade themselves—rest upon horizontal bars, which are here and there supported by forked uprights, trees rudely barked. Near the coast the eaves are broad and high: in the interior they are purposely made so low that a man must creep in on all fours. The door-way resembles the entrance to an English pig-sty, it serves, however, to keep out heat in the hot season, and to keep in smoke and warmth during the rains and the cold weather: the threshold is garnished with a horizontal log or board that defends the interior from inundation. The door is a square of reeds fastened together by bark or cord, and planted upright at night between the wall and two dwarf posts at each side of the entrance: there is generally a smaller and a secret door opposite that in use, and jealously closed up except when flight is necessary. In the colder and damper regions there is a second wall and roof outside the first, forming in fact one house within the other.

About Central Usagara the normal African haystack-hut makes place for the “Tembe” which extends westward, a little beyond Unyanyembe. The Tembe, though of Hamitic origin, resembles the Utum of the ancients, and the Hishan of the modern Hejaz, those hollow squares of building which have extended through Spain to France and even to Ireland: it was, probably, suggested to Africa and to Arabia by the necessity of defence to, as well as lodging for, man and beast. It is to a certain extent, a proof of civilisation in Eastern Africa: the wildest tribes have not progressed beyond the mushroom or circular hut, a style of architecture which seems borrowed from the indigenous mimosa tree.

Westward of Unyamwezi in Uvinza and about the Tanganyika Lake the round hovel again finds favour with the people; but even there the Arabs prefer to build for themselves the more solid and comfortable Tembe.

The haystack-hut has been described by a multitude of travellers: the “Tembe,” or hollow village, yet awaits that honour.

The “Tembe” wants but the addition of white-wash to make it an effective feature in African scenery: as it is, it appears from afar like a short line of raised earth. Provided with a block-house at each angle to sweep dead ground where fire, the only mode of attack practised in these regions, can be applied, it would become a fort impregnable to the Eastern African. The form is a hollow square or oblong, generally irregular, with curves, projections, and semicircles; in the East African Ghauts, the shape is sometimes round or oval to suit the exigencies of the hill-sides and the dwarf cones upon which it is built. On the mountains and in Ugogo, where timber is scarce, the houses form the continued frontage of the building, which, composed of mimosa-trunks, stout stakes, and wattle and dab, rarely exceeds seven feet in height. In the southern regions of Usagara where the Tembe is poorest, the walls are of clods loosely put together and roofed over with a little straw. About Msene where fine trees abound, the Tembe is surrounded by a separate boma or palisade of young unbarked trunks, short or tall, and capped here and there with cattle-skulls, blocks of wood, grass-wisps, and similar talismans; this stockade, in damper places, is hedged with a high thick fence, sometimes doubled and trebled, of peagreen milk-bush, which looks pretty and refreshing, and is ditched outside with a deep trench serving as a drain. The cleared space in front of the main passage through the hedges is often decorated with a dozen poles, placed in a wide semicircle to support human skulls, the mortal remains of ill-conducted boors. In some villages the principal entrance is approached by long, dark and narrow lanes of palisading. When the settlement is built purely for defence, it is called “Kaya,” and its headman “Muinyi Kaya,” the word, however, is sometimes used for “Boma” or “Mji,” a palisaded village in general. In some parts of Unyamwezi there is a Bandani or exterior boothy, where the men work at the forge, or sit in the shade, and where the women husk, pound, and cook their grain.

The general roof of the Tembe is composed of mud and clay heaped upon grass thickly strewed over a framework of rafters supported by the long walls. It has, usually, an obtuse slope to the front and another to the rear, that rain may not lie; it is, however, flat enough to support the bark-bins of grain, gourds, old pots, firewood, water-melons, pumpkins, manioc, mushrooms, and other articles placed there to ripen or dry in the sun. It has no projecting eaves, and it is ascended from the inside by the primitive ladder, the inclined trunk of a tree, with steps formed by the stumps of lopped boughs, acting rings. The roof, during the rains, is a small plot of bright green grass: I often regretted not having brought with me a little store of mustard and cress. In each external side of the square, one or two door-ways are pierced; they are large enough to admit a cow, and though public they often pass through private domiciles. They are jealously closed at sunset, after which hour not a villager dares to stir from his home till morning. The outer doors are sometimes solid planks, more often they are three or four heavy beams suspended to a cross-bar passing through their tops. When the way is to be opened they are raised from below and are kept up by being planted in a forked tree-trunk inside the palisade: they are let down when the entrance is to be closed, and are barred across with strong poles.

The tenements are divided from one another by party-walls of the same material as the exterior. Each house has, usually, two rooms, a “but” and a “ben,” which vary in length from 20 to 50 feet, and in depth from 12 to 15: they are partitioned by a screen of corn-canes supported by stakes, with a small passage left open for light. The “but,” used as parlour, kitchen, and dormitory, opens upon the common central square; the “ben” receives a glimmer from the doors and chinks, which have not yet suggested the idea of windows: it serves for a sleeping and a store room; it is a favourite place with hens and pigeons that aspire to be mothers, and the lambs and kids in early infancy are allowed to pass the night there. The inner walls are smeared with mud: lime is not procurable in Eastern Africa, and the people have apparently no predilection for the Indian “Gobar:” floor is of tamped earth, rough, uneven, and unclean. The prism-shaped ceiling is composed of rafters and thin poles gently rising from the long-walls to the centre, where they are supported by strong horizontals, which run the whole length of the house, and these again rest upon a proportionate number of pillars, solid forked uprights, planted in the floor. The ceiling is polished to a shiny black with smoke, which winds its way slowly through the door—smoke and grease are the African’s coat and small clothes, they contribute so much to his health and comfort that he is by no means anxious to get rid of them—and sooty lines depend from it like negro-stalactites.

The common enceinte formed by the houses is often divided into various courts, intended for different families, by the walls of the tenements, or by stout screens, and connected by long wynds and dark alleys of palisade-work. The largest and cleanest square usually belongs to the headman. In these spaces cattle are milked and penned; the ground is covered with a thick coat of the animals’ earths, dust in the hot weather and deep viscid mud during the rains: the impurity must be an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease. The villagers are fond of planting in the central courts trees, under whose grateful shade the loom is plied, the children play, the men smoke, and the women work. Here, also, stands the little Mzimu, or Fetiss-hut, to receive the oblations of the pious. Places are partitioned off from the public ground, near the houses, by horizontal trunks of trees, resting on forks, forming pens to keep the calves from the cows at night. In some villages huge bolsters of surplus grain, neatly packed in bark and corded round, are raised on tall poles near the interior doors of the tenements. Often, too, the insides of the settlements boast of pigeon-houses, which in this country are made to resemble, in miniature, those of the people. In Unyamwezi the centre is sometimes occupied by the Iwanza, or village “public-house,” which will be described in a future chapter.

In some regions, as in Ugogo, these lodgings become peculiarly offensive if not burnt after the first year. The tramping of the owners upon the roof shakes mud and soot from the ceiling, and the rains wash down masses of earthwork heavy enough to do injury. The interior is a menagerie of hens, pigeons, and rats, of peculiar impudence. Scorpions and earwigs fall from their nests in the warm or shady rafters. The former, locally termed “Nge,” is a small yellow variety, and though it stings spitefully the pain seldom lasts through the day; as many as three have dropped upon my couch in the course of the week. In Ugogo there is a green scorpion from four to five inches long, which inflicts a torturing wound. According to the Arabs the scorpion in Eastern Africa dies after inflicting five consecutive stings, and commits suicide if a bit of stick be applied to the middle of its back. The earwig is common in all damp places, and it haunts the huts on account of the shade. The insect apparently casts its coat before the rainy season, and the Africans ignore the superstition which in most European countries has given origin to its trivial name. A small xylophagus with a large black head rains a yellow dust like pollen from the riddled woodwork; house-crickets chirp from evening to dawn; cockroaches are plentiful as in an Indian steamer; and a solitary mason-wasp, the “Kumbharni,” or “potter’s wife” of western India—a large hymenopter of several varieties, tender-green, or black and yellow, or dark metallic blue—burrows holes in the wall, or raises plastered nests, and buzzes about the inmates’ ears; lizards, often tailless after the duello, tumble from the ceilings; in the darker corners spiders of frightful hideousness weave their solid webs; and the rest of the population is represented by tenacious ticks of many kinds, flies of sorts, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, and small ants, which are, perhaps, the worst plagues of all. The Riciniæ in Eastern Africa are locally called Papazi, which probably explains the “Pazi bug,” made by Dr. Krapf a rival in venom to the Argas Persicus, or fatal “bug of Miana.” In Eastern Africa these parasites are found of many shapes, round and oval, flat and swollen; after suction they vary in size from microscopic dimensions to three-quarters of an inch; the bite cannot poison, but the constant irritation caused by it may induce fever and its consequences. A hut infested with Papazi must be sprinkled with boiling water, and swept clean for many weeks, before they will disappear. In the Tembe there is no draught to disturb the smaller occupants, consequently they are more numerous than in the circular cottage. Moreover, the people, having an aversion to sleeping in the open air, thus supply their co-inhabitants with nightly rations, which account for their fecundity.

The abodes, as might be expected, are poorly furnished. In Unyamwezi, they contain invariably one or more “Kitanda.” This cartel, or bedstead, is a rude contrivance. Two parallel lines of peeled tree-branches, planted at wide intervals, support in their forks horizontal poles: upon these is spread crosswise a layer of thick sticks, which forms the frame. The bedding consists of a bull-hide or two, and perhaps a long, coarse, rush-mat. It is impossible for any one but an African to sleep upon these Kitanda, on account of their shortness, the hardness of the material, and the rapid slope which supplies the want of pillows, and serves for another purpose which will not be described. When removed, a fractured pole will pour forth a small shower of the foul cimex: this people of hard skins considers its bite an agreeable titillation, and, what may somewhat startle a European, esteems its odour a perfume. Around the walls depend from pegs neatly-plaited slings of fibrous cord, supporting gourds and “vilindo”—neat cylinders, like small band-boxes, of tree bark, made to contain cloth, butter, grain, or other provisions. In the store-room, propped upon stones, and plastered over with clay for preservation, are Lindo, huge corn-bins of the same material; grain is ground upon a coarse granite slab, raised at an angle of 25°, about one foot above the floor, and embedded in a rim of hard clay. The hearth is formed of three “Mafiga,” or truncated cones of red or grey mud, sometimes two feet high, and ten inches in diameter at the base: they are disposed triangularly, with the apex to the wall, and open to the front when the fire is made. The pot rests upon the tripod. The broom, a wisp of grass, a bunch of bamboo splints, or a split fibrous root, usually sticks in the ceiling; its work is left to the ants. From the rafters hang drums and kettle-drums, skins and hides in every process, and hooked twigs dangling from strings support the bows and arrows, the spears and assegais. An arrow is always thrust into the inner thatch for good luck: ivory is stored between the rafters, hence its dark ruddy colour, which must be removed by ablution with warm blood; and the ceiling is a favourite place for small articles that require seasoning—bows, quivers, bird-bolts, knob-sticks, walking-canes, reed-nozzles for bellows, and mi’iko or ladles, two feet long, used to stir porridge. The large and heavy water-pots, of black clay, which are filled every morning and evening by the women at the well, lie during the day empty or half empty about the room. The principal article of luxury is the “Kiti,” or dwarf stool, cut out of a solid block, measuring one foot in height by six inches in diameter, with a concave surface for convenience of sitting: it has usually three carved legs or elbows; some, however, are provided with a fourth, and with a base like the seat, to steady them. They are invariably used by the Sultan and the Mganga, who disdain to sit upon the ground: and the Wamrima ornament them with plates of tin let into the upper concaves. The woods generally used for the Kiti, are the Mninga and the Mpingu. The former is a tall and stately tree, which supplies wood of a dark mahogany colour, exuding in life a red gum, like dragon’s blood: the trunk is converted into bowls and platters, the boughs into rafters, which are, however, weak and subject to the xylophagus, whilst of the heart are made spears, which, when old and well-greased, resemble teak-wood. The Mpingu is the Sisam of India, (Dalbergia Sissoo) here erroneously called by the Arabs Abnus—ebony. The tree is found throughout Eastern Africa. The wood is of fine quality, and dark at the core: the people divide it into male and female; the former is internally a dark brick-dust red, whilst the latter verges upon black: they make from it spears and axe-handles, which soon, however, when exposed to the air, unless regularly greased, become brittle. The massive mortar, for husking grain, called by the people “Mchi,” is shaped exactly like those portrayed in the interior-scenes of ancient Egypt: it is hewn out of the trunk of the close-grained Mkora tree. The huge pestle, like a capstan-bar, is made of the Mkorongo, a large tree with a fine-grained wood, which is also preferred to others for rafters, as it best resists the attacks of insects.

Such, gentle reader, is the Tembe of Central Africa. Concerning village life, I shall have something to say in a future page. The scene is more patent to the stranger’s eye in these lands than in the semi-civilised regions of Asia, where men rarely admit him into their society.