the bodies are slowly swayed from side to side, presently as excitement increases, the exercise waxes severe: they “cower down and lay out their buttocks,” to use pedantic Ascham’s words, “as though they would shoot at crows;” they bend and recover themselves, and they stoop and rise to the redoubled sound of the song and the heel-music, till the assembly, with arms waving like windmills, assumes the frantic semblance of a ring of Egyptian Darwayshes. The performance often closes with a grand promenade; all the dancers being jammed in a rushing mass, a _galop infernale_, with the features of satyrs, and gestures resembling aught but the human. When the fun threatens to become too fast and furious, the song dies, and the performers, with loud shouts of laughter, throw themselves on the ground, to recover strength and breath. The greybeards look on with admiration and sentiment, remembering the days when they were capable of similar feats. Instead of “bravo,” they ejaculate “Nice! nice! very nice!” and they wonder what makes the white men laugh. The ladies prefer to perform by themselves, and perhaps in the East, ours would do the same, if a literal translation of the remarks to which a ball always gives rise amongst Orientals, happened by misfortune to reach their refined ears. When there is no dancing, and the porters can no longer eat, drink, and smoke, they sit by their fires, chatting, squabbling, talking and singing some such “pure nectar” as the following. The song was composed, I believe, in honour of me, and I frequently heard it when the singers knew that it was understood. The Cosmopolitan reader will not be startled by the epithet “Mbaya,” or wicked, therein applied to the Muzungu. A “good white man,” would indeed, in these lands, have been held an easy-going soul, a natural, an innocent, like the “buona famiglia,” of the Italian cook, who ever holds the highest quality of human nature to be a certain facility for being “plucked without ’plaining,” and being “flayed without flinching.” Moreover, despite my “wickedness,” they used invariably to come to me for justice and redress, especially when proximity to the coast encouraged the guide and guards to “bully” them. “Muzungu mbaya” (the wicked white man) goes from the shore, (_Chorus_) Puti! Puti! (I can only translate it by “grub! grub!”) We will follow “Muzungu mbaya.” Puti! Puti! As long as he gives us good food! Puti! Puti! We will traverse the hill and the stream, Puti! Puti! With the caravan of this great mundewa (merchant). Puti! Puti! &c., &c.