When all is ready, the Kirangozi or Mnyamwezi guide rises and shoulders his load, which is ever one of the lightest. He deliberately raises his furled flag, a plain blood-red, the sign of a caravan from Zanzibar, much tattered by the thorns, and he is followed by a privileged Pagazi, tom-toming upon a kettle-drum much resembling a European hour-glass. The dignitary is robed in the splendour of scarlet broadcloth, a narrow piece about six feet long, with a central aperture for the neck, and with streamers dangling before and behind; he also wears some wonderful head-dress, the spoils of a white and black “tippet-monkey,” or the barred skin of a wild cat, crowning the head, bound round the throat, hanging over the shoulders, and capped with a tall cup-shaped bunch of owl’s feathers, or the gorgeous plumes of the crested crane. His insignia of office are the kipungo or fly-flapper, the tail of some beast which he affixes to his person as if it were a natural growth, the kome, or hooked iron spit, decorated with a central sausage of parti-coloured beads, and a variety of oily little gourds containing snuff, simples, and “medicine,” for the road, strapped round his waist. He leads the caravan, and the better to secure the obedience of his followers he has paid them in a sheep or a goat, the value of which he will recover by fees and superiority of rations--the head of every animal slaughtered in camp and the presents at the end of the journey are exclusively his. A man guilty of preceding the Kirangozi is liable to fine, and an arrow is extracted from his quiver to substantiate his identity at the end of the march. Pouring out of the kraal in a disorderly mob, the porters stack their goods at some tree distant but a few hundred yards, and allow the late, the lazy, and the invalids to join the main body. Generally at this conjuncture the huts are fired by neglect or mischievousness. The khambi, especially in winter, burns like tinder, and the next caravan will find a heap of hot ashes and a few charred sticks still standing. Yet by way of contrast the Pagazi will often take the trouble to denote by the usual signposts to those following them that water is at hand. Here and there a little facetiousness appears in these erections, a mouth is cut in the tree-trunk to admit a bit of wood, simulating a pipe, with other representations still more waggish.