The people of East Africa, when first visited by the Arabs, were satisfied with the coarsest and flimsiest Kaniki imported by the Banyans from Cutch. When American merchants settled at Zanzibar, Kaniki yielded before the advance of “Merkani,” which now supplies the markets from Abyssinia to the Mozambique. But the wild men are fast losing their predilection for a stuff which is neither comfortable nor durable, and in many regions the tribes satisfied with goat-skins and tree barks, prefer to invest their capital in the more attractive beads and wire. It would evidently be advantageous if England or her colonies could manufacture an article better suited to the wants of the country than that now in general use; but as long as the Indian short-stapled cotton must be used, there is little probability of her competing with the produce of the New World. In Eastern Africa cotton cloth is used only for wear. The popular article is a piece of varying breadth but always of four cubits, or six feet, in length: the braça of Portuguese Africa, it is called by the Arabs, shukkah, by the Wasawahili, unguo, and in the far interior upande or lupande. It is used as a loin-wrapper, and is probably the first costume of Eastern Africa and of Arabia. The plate borrowed from Montfaucon’s edition of the “Topographia Christiana,” by Dr. Vincent (Part I. Appendix to the Periplus) shows the Shukkah, to be the general dress of Ethiopians, as it was of the Egyptians, and the spear their weapon. The use of the Shukkah during the Meccan pilgrimage, when the devotees cast off such innovations as coats and breeches for the national garb of their ancestors, proves its antiquity throughout the regions eastward of the Red Sea. On the African coast the Shukkah Merkani is worth about 0·25 dollars = 1_s._ 0½_d._, in the interior it rises to the equivalent of a dollar (4_s._ _2d._) and even higher. The Kaniki is but little cheaper than the Merkani, when purchased upon the sea-board; its increase of value in the interior, however, is by no means in proportion to its prime cost, and by some tribes it is wholly rejected. A double length of Shukkah, or twelve feet, the article worn by women who can afford it, is called a Doti, and corresponds with the Tobe of Abyssinia and of the Somali country. The whole piece of Merkani, which contains from seven to eleven Doti, is termed a Jurah or Gorah.