several of the guard, were invited to an English dinner on a fair sirloin of beef, and a curious succedaneum for a plum-pudding, where neither flour nor currants were to be found. A characteristic trait manifested itself on this occasion. Amongst Arabs, the remnants of a feast must always be distributed to the servants and slaves of the guests;--a “brass knocker” would lose a man’s reputation. Knowing this, I had ordered the Goanese to do in Rome as the Romans do; and being acquainted with their peculiarities, I paid them an unexpected visit, where they were found so absorbed in the task of hiding, under pots and pans, every better morsel from a crowd of hungry peerers that the interruption of a stick was deemed necessary. At length, on the 10th January, 1858, I left Msene with considerable difficulty. The Kirangozi, or guide, who had promised to accompany me, had sent an incompetent substitute, his brother, a raw young lad, who had no power to collect porters. The sons of Ramji positively refused to lend their aid in strengthening the gang. One of Said bin Salim’s children, the boy Faraj, had fled to Kazeh. The bull-headed Mabruki was brought back from flight only by the persuasion of his brother “Bombay,” and even “Bombay,” under the influence of some negroid Neæra, at the time of departure hid himself in his hut. All feared the march westwards. A long strip of blue hill lying northwards ever keeps the traveller in mind of the robber Watuta, and in places where the clans are mixed, all are equally hostile to strangers. Villages are less frequented and more meanly built, and caravans are not admitted beyond the faubourgs--the miserable huts outlying the fences. The land also is most unhealthy. After the rain, the rich dark loam becomes, like the black soils of Guzerat and the Deccan, a coat of viscid mire. Above is a canopy of cumulus and purple nimbus, that discharge their loads in copious day-long floods. The vegetation is excessive, and where there is no cultivation a dense matting of coarse grass, laid by wind and water and decayed by mud, veils the earth, and from below rises a clammy chill, like the thaw-cold of England, the effect of extreme humidity. And, finally, the paths are mere lines, pitted with deep holes, and worn by cattle through the jungle.