digesters; these, therefore, were ordered to do duty as dishes. When tea or coffee is required in a drinkable state, we must superintend the process of preparing it, the notions of the Goanese upon such subjects being abominable to the civilised palate. When we have eaten our servants take their turn; they squat opposite each other over a private “cooking-pot” to which they have paid unremitting attention; they stretch forth their talons and eat till weary, not satiated, pecking, nodding, and cramming like two lank black pigeons. Being “Christians,” that is to say, Roman Catholics, they will not feed with the heathenry, moreover a sort of semi-European dignity forbids. Consequently Bombay messes with his “brother” Mabruki, and the other slaves eat by themselves. When the wells ahead are dry the porters will scarcely march in the morning; their nervous impatience of thirst is such that they would exhaust all their gourds, if they expected a scarcity in front, and then they would suffer severely through the long hot day. They persist, moreover, upon eating before the march, under the false impression that it gives them strength and bottom. In fact, whenever difficulties as regards grain or drink suggest themselves, the African requires the direction of some head-piece made of better stuff than his own. The hardships of the tirikeza have already been described: they must be endured to be realised. Night is ushered in by penning and pounding the cows, and by tethering the asses--these “careless Æthiopians” lose them every second day,--and by collecting and numbering the loads, a task of difficulty where every man shirks the least trouble. When there has been no tirikeza, when provisions have been plentiful, and when there is a bright moonshine, which seems to enliven these people like jackals, a furious drumming, a loud clapping of hands, and a general droning song, summon the lads and the lasses of the neighbouring villages to come out and dance and “make love.” The performance is laborious, but these Africans, like most men of little game, soon become too tired to work, but not too tired to play and amuse themselves. Their style of salutation is remarkable only for the excessive gravity which it induces; at no other time does the East African look so serious, so full of earnest purpose. Sometimes a single dancer, the village buffoon, foots a _pas seul_, featly, with head, arms, and legs, bearing strips of hair-garnished cow-skin, which are waved, jerked, and contorted, as if dislocation had occurred to his members. At other times, a line or a circle of boys and men is formed near the fire, and one standing in the centre, intones the song solo, the rest humming a chorus in an undertone. The dancers plumbing and tramping to the measure with alternate feet, simultaneously perform a treadmill exercise with a heavier stamp at the end of every period: they are such timists, that a hundred pair of heels sound like one. At first