there is perhaps less of wizardhood and witchcraft, and consequently less of its normal consequences, fiscs and massacres, than in any other region between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. “Arrow-heads” employed every art of wild diplomacy to relieve me of as much cloth as possible. I received, when encamped at the Ziwa, a polite message declaring his desire to see white men; but--“the favour of the winds produces dust”--I was obliged to acknowledge the compliment with two cottons. On arrival at his head-quarters I was waited upon by an oily cabinet of Wazirs and elders, who would not depart without their “respects”--four cottons. The next demand was made by his favourite wife, a peculiarly hideous old princess with more wrinkles than hairs, with no hair black and no tooth white, and attended by ladies in waiting as unprepossessing as herself: she was not to be dismissed without a fee of six cottons. At last, accompanied by a mob of courtiers, who crowded in like an African House of Commons, appeared in person the magnifico. He was the only Sultan that ever entered my tent in Ugogo--pride and a propensity for strong drink prevented other visits. He was much too great a man to call upon the Arab merchants, but in our case curiosity had mastered state considerations. Magomba was a black and wrinkled elder, drivelling and decrepid, with a half-bald head from whose back and sides depended a few straggling corkscrews of iron gray: he wore a coat of castor-oil and a “Barsati” loin-cloth, which grease and use had changed from blue to black. A few bead strings decorated his neck, large flexible anklets of brass wire adorned his legs, solid brass rings, single and in coils, which had distended his earlobes almost to splitting, were tied by a string over his cranium, and his horny soles were defended by single-soled sandals, old, dirty, and tattered. He chewed his quid and he expectorated without mercy; he asked many a silly question, yet he had ever an eye to the main chance. He demanded and received five “cloths with names,” which I was again compelled to purchase at an exorbitant price from the Baloch and slaves, one coil of brass wire, four blue cottons, and ten “domestics;” the total amounted to fifty shukkahs, here worth at least fifty dollars, and exhausting nearly two-thirds of a porter’s load. His return present was the leanest of calves; when it was driven into camp with much parade, his son, who had long been looking out for a fit opportunity, put in a claim for three cottons.