After all, however, there is some reason in the African’s objection to be hurried on a march, or to exert himself overmuch in the interests of a traveller, whose private affairs are nothing to him and whom, when discharged, he will in all probability never see again. He does not particularly wish to see him, as he is perfectly comfortable at home. According to the last quoted authority he rises with the dawn from his couch of cow’s-hide. The hut is cool and comfortable during the day; but the barred door, impeding ventilation at night, causes it to be close and disagreeable. The hour before sunrise being the coldest time, he usually kindles a fire and addresses himself to his constant companion the pipe. When the sun becomes sufficiently powerful, he removes the reed-screen from the entrance and issues forth to bask in the morning beams. The villages are populous, and the houses touching one another enable the occupants, when squatting outside and fronting the central square, to chat and chatter without moving. About 7 a.m., when the dew has partially disappeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the flocks and herds to pasture, with loud shouts and sounding applications of the quarter staff. They return only when the sun is sinking behind the western horizon. At 8 p.m. those who have provisions at home enter the hut to refection with ugali or holcus-porridge, those who have not join a friend. Pombe, when procurable, is drunk from the earliest dawn. After breaking his fast, the African repairs, pipe in hand, to the Iwanza, the village public previously described. Here in the society of his own sex he will spend the greater part of the day talking and laughing, smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits down to play. As with barbarians generally, gambling in him is a passion. The normal game is our “heads and tails,” the implement, a flat stone, a rough circle of tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised have learned the “bas” of the coast, a kind of “tables” with counters and cups hollowed in a solid plank. Many of the Wanyamwezi have been compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery after playing through their property; they even stake their aged mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands,--a cow or a pair of goats. As may be imagined, squabbles are perpetual, they are almost always, however, settled amongst fellow-villagers with bloodless weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some employment which, working the hands and leaving the rest of the body and the mind at ease, is ever a favourite with the Asiatic and the African; they whittle wood, pierce and wire their pipe sticks--an art in which all are adepts,--shave one another’s heads, pluck out their beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and prepare and polish their weapons.