Nzasa is the first district of independent Uzaramo. My men proceeded to occupy the Bandani, in the centre of the hamlet, when Said bin Salim, discovering with the sharp eye of fear a large drum, planted in readiness for the war-signal or the dance-signal, hurried about till he had turned all hands out of the village into a clump of trees hard by, a propitious place for surprise and ambuscade. Here I was visited by three P’hazi or headmen, Kizaya, Tumba Ihere or the “poison gourd,” and Kombe la Simba or the “lion’s hide.” They came to ascertain whether I was bound on peaceful errand or--as the number of our guns suggested--I was marching to revenge the murder of my “brother” Muzungu. Assured of our unwarlike intentions, they told me that I must halt on the morrow and send forward a message to the next chief. As this plan invariably loses three days,--the first being a _dies non_, the second being expended in dispensing exoteric information to all the lieges squatting in solemn conclave, whilst on the third the real message is privily whispered into the chieftain’s ear,--I replied through Said that I could not be bound by their rules, but was ready to pay for their infraction. During the debate upon this fascinating proposal for breaking the law, Yusuf, one of the most turbulent of the Baloch, drew his sword upon an old woman because she refused to give up a basket of grain. She rushed, with the face of a black Medusa, into the assembly, and provoked not very peaceable remarks concerning the peaceful nature of our intentions. When the excitement was allayed, the principal P’hazi began to ask what had brought the white man into their country, and in a breath to predict the loss of their gains and commerce, their land and liberty. “I am old,” pathetically quoth the P’hazi, “and my beard is grey, yet I have never beheld such a calamity as this!” “These men,” replied Said, “neither buy nor sell; they do not inquire into price, nor do they covet profit. Moreover,” he pursued, “what have ye to lose? The Arabs take your best, the Wasawahili your second best, and your trifling tribute is reduced to a yoke of bullocks, a few clothes, or half a dozen hoes.” An extravagant present--at that time ignorance of the country compelled me to intrust such matters to the honesty of Said bin Salim--opened the headmen’s hearts: they privily termed me Murungwana Sana, a real free-man, the African equivalent for the English “gentleman,” and they detached Kizaya to accompany me as far as the western half of the Kingani Valley. At 4 P. M. a loud drumming collected the women, who began to perform a dance of ceremony with peculiar vigour. A line of small, plump, chestnut-coloured beings, with wild beady eyes, and a thatch of clay-plastered hair, dressed in their loin-cloths, with a profusion of white disks, bead necklaces, a little square bib of beads called a t’hando, partially concealing the upper bosom, with short coils of thick