Sometimes from mere stupid wantonness, shots were fired in the air from the vessels, and the natives disappeared from the shore for a short time, but returned directly that the report of the shots died away. Several women now approached, part of them decked with the before-named leathern apron, and part with a rahàt girded round their hips, as in the land of Sudàn. The threads hanging down from the girdle are not narrow slips of leather, such as those in Sennaar, but twisted cotton, and only the length of a finger. These scarcely form in front a light thread apron of a span in breadth, and leave the hips free, on which laces with tassels and small iron chains hang down, and a tuft falls down over the os sacrum, moving to and fro when they walk like an animal’s tail. Now I see that the women _wish_ to paint themselves, as I saw them before. There are two who have coloured their nipples and navels to the size of a dollar. The breasts are more rounded, and have not that horizontal conical form found in the black slaves of the land of Sudàn. I have already previously remarked that the women on the White Stream possess modesty in the concrete sense of the word; and though part of them are young and beautiful, but not tall, compared with the men, yet they regard these naked and magnificent manly forms without any immodest look; so, likewise, the men, kings of the world, gaze tranquilly upon the women. I am fully persuaded that, where woman bears in her mind the principle of the most necessary covering, naked truth is exactly the thing to keep up constantly a chaste as well as a decent relation between the sexes. Only give these women the deceits of the dress of European ladies, and clothe the men, and we shall see what will become of the _blameless Ethiopians!_