Some of the women can work very prettily with grass and fibre. Having discovered various vegetable dyes, they are able to make very attractive designs in basket-work by dyeing the grass different colours. The fibre they make into string and then form beautiful knotted bags in which they have their gourds. It was only by living some time among them that we discovered these hidden trophies of a spasmodic industry. Very few care about rousing themselves and devoting the time and care needed for this work; the fault of the women is their inherent laziness; the generality of them desire nothing so much as to sit still and do absolutely nothing. They are so fond of begging, begging, begging, but when you suggest their _working_, off they go and you never see them any more. Others will remain in their homes ill for days, and no one will have the energy to come down and ask for medicine. An industrial exhibition was suggested by two of our missionaries in 1903, and will be held every year, it is hoped. Most ingenious bee-hives and rat traps were brought in as exhibits, besides all sorts of grass and string work, painted bark cloths and gourds, and so on. The novelty of the exhibition caused great excitement among the people, and the schoolroom was packed to its utmost capacity with competitors and others. His Majesty, Daudi Kasagama, opened the proceedings with an earnest appeal to his people to make the show an even greater success next time by increasing the number of exhibits and raising the standard of proficiency. [Illustration: THE BATORO AT HOME. _Photo by D. V. F. Figueira, Mombasa._] Before the advent of Christianity there had been nothing to break the dull monotony of the women’s existence. As they sat, day after day, huddled together in their dirty little grass homes, their conversation scarcely ever ventured outside the well-beaten track of real or imaginary sickness, and the usual revolting topics that polygamy and heathenism suggest. Modesty, reserve, shame and sensitiveness were not known among them. One’s whole nature recoils from the recollection of Africa’s lost womanhood.