“These two extensive countries, Rua and Manyema, are populated by true heathens--governed not as the sovereignties of Karagwah, Wumdi, and Uganda by despotic kings, but each village by its own sultan or lord. Thirty miles outside of their own immediate settlements the most intelligent of those small chiefs seem to know nothing. Thirty miles from the Lualaba there were but few people who had ever heard of the great river. Such ignorance among the natives of their own countries, of course, increased the labors of Livingstone. Compared with these all tribes and nations in Africa with whom Livingstone came in contact may be deemed civilized. Yet in the arts of home manufacture these wild people of Manyema are far superior to any he had seen. When other tribes and nations contented themselves with hides and skins of animals thrown negligently over their shoulders the people of Manyema manufactured a cloth from fine grass which may favorably compare with the finest grass cloth of India. They also know the art of dyeing in various colors--black, yellow, and purple. The Wanguana or freed men of Zanzibar, struck with the beauty of this fine grass fabric, eagerly exchange their cotton cloths for fine grass cloth, and on almost every black man returned from Manyema I have seen this native cloth converted into elegantly made _damirs_ (Arabic)--short jackets. “These countries are also very rich in ivory. The fever for going to Manyema to exchange their tawdry beads for the precious tusks of Manyema is of the same kind as that which impelled men to the gulches and placers of California, Colorado, Montana, and Idaho; after nuggets to Australia, and diamonds to Cape Colony. Manyema is at present the El Dorado of the Arabs and the Wamrima tribes. It is only about four years since the first Arab returned from Manyema with such wealth of ivory and reports about the fabulous quantities found there that ever since the old beaten tracks of Karagwah, Uganda, Ufipa and Marungu have been comparatively deserted. The people of Manyema, ignorant of the value of the precious article, reared their huts upon ivory stanchions. Ivory pillars and doors were common sights in Manyema, and hearing of these one can no longer wonder at the ivory palace of Solomon. For generations they had used ivory tusks as doorposts and eave stanchions, until they had become perfectly rotten and worthless. But the advent of the Arabs soon taught them the value of the article. It has now risen considerably in price, though yet fabulously cheap. At Zanzibar the value of ivory per frarsilah of thirty-five pounds weight is from fifty dollars to sixty dollars, according to its quality. In Unyanyembe it is about one dollar and ten cents per pound; but in Manyema it may be purchased for from half a cent to one and a quarter cent’s worth of copper per pound of ivory. [Illustration: AN AFRICAN BELLE.]