The little settlement of Kuingani is composed of a few bee-hive huts, and a Bandani or wall-less thatched roof--the village palaver-house--clustering orderless round a cleared central space. Outside, cocoas, old and dwarfed, mangoes almost wild, the papaw, the cotton shrub, the perfumed Rayhan or Basil, and a sage-like herb, the sugarcane, and the Hibiscus called by the Goanese “Rosel,” vary the fields of rice, holcus, and “Turiyan,” or the Cajanus Indicus. The vegetation is, in fact, that of the Malabar coast; the habitations are peculiarly African. The 28th of June was a halt at Kuingani, where I was visited by Ramji and two brother Bhattias, Govindji and Kesulji. The former was equipped, as least becomes the Banyan man, with sword, dudgeon, and assegai. But Ramji was a heaven-made soldier; he had taken an active part in the military operations directed by His Highness the late Sayyid Said against the people of the mainland, and about thirteen years ago he defended Kaole against a host of Wazaramo, numbering, it is said, 3,000 men, when, lacking balls, he had loaded his honeycombed cannon and his rusty matchlocks with pointed sticks. The Europeans of Zanzibar called him “Rush,”--the murderer. His fellow-countrymen declared him to be a “sharp practiser,” who had made a reputation by spending other people’s money, and I personally had proofs which did not allow me to doubt his “savoir faire.” The nights at Kuingani were not pleasant. The air was stifling, the mosquitoes buzzed without intermission, and I had neglected to lay in “essence of pennyroyal” against certain other plagues. On the second evening, seeing by the hang-dog look of my Jemadar that he was travailing in mind, I sent for a Mganga or medicine-man, and having previously promised him a Surat skull-cap for a good haul of prophecy, I collected the Baloch to listen. The Mganga, a dark old man, of superior rank, as the cloth round his head and his many bead necklaces showed, presently reappeared with a mat-bag containing the implements of his craft. After taking his seat opposite to me he demanded his fee--here, as elsewhere, to use the words with which Kleon excited the bile of Tiresias, “Το μαντικον γαρ παν φιλαργυρον γενος;”