--and dotted over with morsels of fowl, so boiled that they shredded like yarn under the teeth. This repast again concluded with a bowl of sweetened milk, and other entremets, for which both hosts amply apologised; the house had lately been burned down, and honey had been used instead of sugar. The day concluded with prayers, with a seance in the verandah and with drinking fresh milk out of gourds--a state of things which again demanded excuses. A multitude of “Washenzi” thronged into the house, especially during the afternoon, to gaze at the Muzungu. I was formally presented to the Sultan Kafrira, a tall and wrinkled elder, celebrated for ready wits and spear. The sons of Ramji had often looked in at the door whilst preparations for feeding were going on, but they were not asked to sit down: the haughty host had provided them with a lean goat, in return for which they privily expressed an opinion that he was a “dog.” Masud, boasting of his intimacy with the Sultan Msimbira, whose subjects had plundered our portmanteau, offered on return to Unyanyembe his personal services in ransoming it. I accepted with joy; but the Shaykh Masud, as afterwards proved, nearly “left his skin” in the undertaking. The climate of Kíríra is called by the Arabs a medicine. They vaunt its virtues, which become apparent after the unhealthy air of Kazeh, and after a delicious night spent in the cool barzah, I had no reason to question its reputation. I arose in the morning wonderfully refreshed, and Valentine, who had been prostrated with fever throughout the day, became another man. Yet the situation was apparently unpropitious; the Gombe Nullah, the main drain of this region, a line of stagnant pools, belted with almost impassable vegetation, lies hard by, and the background is an expanse of densest jungle. Three short and eventless marches through thick jungle, with scattered clearings, led me, on the 30th December, to the district of Msene, where the dense wild growth lately traversed suddenly opens out and discloses to the west a broad view of admirable fertility. Before entering the settlements, the caravan halted, as usual, to form up. We then progressed with the usual pomp and circumstance; the noise was terrific, and the streets, or rather the spaces between the houses, were lined with Negroid spectators. I was led to the Tembe of one Saadullah, a low-caste Msawahili, and there found my companion looking but poorly. Gaetano, his “boy,” was so excited by the scene, that he fell down in a fit closely resembling epilepsy.