During the brief detention off Wale Point, the latitudes and longitudes of the estuary of the Kingani, the main artery of these regions, and of the little settlements Bagamoyo and Kaole,--strongly against the advice of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who declared that by such proceedings the Expedition was going to the bad,--were laid down by my companion: a novice lunarian, he was assisted by Mohammed bin Khamis, who had read his “Norie” in England. Various visits to the hippopotamus haunts produced little beyond the damaging of the corvette’s gig, which, suddenly uplifted from the water upon the points of two tusks, showed two corresponding holes in her bottom. Nor did I neglect to land as often as possible at Kaole, the point of departure upon the mainland, for the purpose of making sketches with the pen and pencil, of urging on preparations, and of gathering those items of “bazar-gup,” _i. e._, tittle-tattle, that represents the labours of the “fourth estate” in Eastern lands. The little settlement of “Kaole”--an abbreviation of Kaole Urembo, meaning literally, in the ancient dialect of the coast, “to show beauty”--is the normal village-port in these regions, which, from Mombasah southwards to Kilwa, still ignore a town of masonry. You land, when the tide is out, upon half a mile of muddy sand, and if a “swell,” you are carried by four men upon the Kitanda--cot or cartel--which is slung along the side of your craft. Arrived at the strip of dry ground that marks the limit of the tide, you are let down, and amidst the shouts of the men, the shrieks of the women, and the naïve remarks of the juvenile population, you ascend by a narrow footpath, worn through the thick jungle and through the millet-fields which press upon the tattered palisade, a dwarf steep bank, on whose summit the settlement lies. Inside the fence are a dozen pent-roofed houses, claret-chests of wattle and dab, divided into three or more compartments by dwarf party-walls of the same material: each messuage is jealously separated from its neighbour by large enclosed “compounds” or court-yards appropriated to the women and children. The largest timber is that of the mangrove; the flying thatch-roof, so raised that, though windows are unknown, the interior enjoys tolerable ventilation, is of jauli, or rude cocoa-plaits, and under the long and projecting eaves, which rest upon strong perpendiculars, are broad earth-benches, divided by the entrance, and garnished with mats: these form the shops and sitting-rooms of the settlement. Some houses have a partial second story, like a ship’s bunk, a planking supported by rafters, and used as a store-closet or a dormitory. Around the larger habitations cluster masses of hovels, and the characteristic African haycock-huts. With closed doors in still weather, these dens are unendurable to a European; the people, however, fearing thieves and wild beasts, never fail to barricade themselves within at night.