Msene, the chief Bandari of Western Unyamwezi, may be called the capital of the Coast Arabs and the Wasawahili, who, having a natural antipathy to their brethren of Oman, have abandoned to them Unyanyembe and its vicinity. Of late years, however, the Omani merchants, having been driven from the neighbouring districts by sundry murders into Msene, may at times be met there to the number of four or five. The inhabitants are chiefly Wasumbwá, a subtribe of the Wanyamwezi race. There is, however, besides Arabs and Wasawahili, a large floating population of the pastoral clan called Watosi, and fugitives from Uhha. In 1858 the chief of Msene was the Sultan Masanza. Both he and Funza, his brother, were hospitable and friendly to travellers, especially to the Arabs, who but a few years ago beat off with their armed slaves a large plundering party of the ferocious Watuta. This chief has considerable power, and the heads of many criminals elevated upon poles in front of his several villages show that he rules with a firm hand. He is never approached by a subject without the clapping of hands and the kneeling which in these lands are the honours paid to royalty. He was a large-limbed, gaunt, and sinewy old man, dressed in a dirty Subai or Arab check, over a coating of rancid butter, with a broad brass disk, neatly arabesqued, round his neck, with a multitude of little pigtails where his head was not bald, and with some thirty sambo or flexible wire rings deforming, as if by elephantiasis, his ankles. Like the generality of sultans, he despises beads as an article of decoration, preferring coils of brass or copper. He called several times at the house occupied by the Expedition, and on more than one occasion brought with him a bevy of wives, whose deportment was, I regret to say, rather naïve than decorous.