My companion’s gun carrier, Seedy Mubarak Bombay, a negro from Uhiao, has twice been sketched in Blackwood (March, 1858 and September, 1859), he also requires no further celebrity. My henchman, Muinyi Mabruki, had been selected by his fellow-tribeman Bombay at Zanzibar; he was the slave of an Arab Shaykh, who willingly let him for the sum of 5 dollars per mensem. Mabruki is the type of the bull-headed negro, low-browed, pig-eyed, pug-nosed, and provided by nature with that breadth and power, that massiveness and muscularity of jaw, which characterise the most voracious carnivors. He is at once the ugliest and the vainest of the party: his attention to his toilette knows no limit. His temper is execrable, ever in extremes, now wild with spirits, then dogged, depressed, and surly, then fierce and violent. He is the most unhandy of men, he spoils everything entrusted to him, and presently he will be forbidden to engage in any pursuit beyond ass-leading and tent-pitching. These worthies commenced well. They excited our admiration by braving noon-day suns, and by snoring heavily through the rawest night with nothing to warm them but a few smouldering embers. In an evil hour compassion-touched, I threw over their shoulders a pair of English blankets, which in the shortest time completely demoralised them. They learned to lie a-bed o’ mornings, and when called up their shrugged shoulders and shrinking forms were wrapped tightly round, lest the breath of dawn should visit them too roughly. Idleness marked them for her own: messmates and sworn brothers; they made at the halt huts out of hail, lest they should be called to do work. As a rule, however, Englishmen have the art of spoiling Eastern servants: we begin with the utmost stretch of exertion, and we expect this high pressure system to last. Of course the men’s energies are soon exhausted, their indolence and apathy contrast with their former activity; we conceive dislikes to them, and we end by dismissing them. This, however, was not the case with Bombay and Mabruki. They returned with us to Zanzibar, and we parted _à l’aimable_, especially with the former, who, after a somewhat protracted fit of the “blue devils,” became once more, what he before had been, a rara avis in the lands, an active servant and an honest man.