The Ruanda people are even more superstitious than most Central African natives. They wear medicine (native name _dawa_) to guard them against every conceivable ill, such as pains in the stomach, leopards, death, etc., etc. It is curious that the natives, like the lower animals, seem to be unable to grasp the fact that they will die; such a thing as a natural death they cannot understand, and always attribute the event to some form of violence, which, if not obvious, they describe as the effect of the "evil eye." The tip of a cow’s horn, inlaid with ivory, is considered particularly efficacious against a pain in the side; and if a man wears two small leather bottles round his neck, he can never die. A large red bean is a sure preventive against leopards. One native wore an extraordinary bracelet; it was made of wood, and beautifully worked with various metals; the total weight must have been at least two pounds. He promised to come into camp and sell it to me; but, having promised, naturally did not come. Of all the liars in Africa, I believe the people of Ruanda are by far the most thorough. I have pointed to a mountain 13,000 ft. high, at a distance of three miles, and asked my native guide whether there was a mountain there: he would say "No!" On the march, if I asked whether there was water near, and he told me "yes," I knew that it would take at least six hours to find the next stream, and therefore camped where I was; if, however, he said that there was no water, one could be perfectly certain of finding several streams within the course of the next ten minutes. Even amongst themselves they appear to talk in the same way, and many of the instances, such as I have mentioned, are so extraordinary that I cannot help thinking that it is a custom. I believe at one place on the coast there is a form of Swahili which is spoken backwards, or rather the end of the word is put first. It seems to me to be just conceivable that the same train of reasoning may affect the habits of speech of the Wa Ruanda. The natives assured me that there were many elephant on the north side of the volcanoes and also to the west, in the countries of Mushari and Gishari; for this reason I was sorely tempted to doubt their existence; however, from Dr. Kandt’s remarks we thought it would be worth while, later on, to go and see. [Illustration: On the Track of the Cannibals.] We had a lot of trouble with our cattle-folk. The head cattle-man was a most persistent, pertinacious scoundrel, and as soon as he was detected in one villainy he invariably tried another; the result being that, although we had ten cows, there was barely enough milk for two people, and butter was quite out of the question. So we determined to take the thing in hand, and make a big effort to find out where the leakage was. As we had expected, under our personal supervision, there was a quantity of milk, enough for us both, and plenty with which we could make butter.