Honest Jetta, as formerly, was employed as my vakeel to purchase the various coloured cloths, fine and coarse, for chiefs and their wives, as well as a large assortment of beads of all sizes, forms, and colours, besides a large quantity of brass wire ⅙ inch in thickness. [Illustration: TARYA TOPAN.] The total weight of goods, cloth, beads, wire, stores, medicine, bedding, clothes, tents, ammunition, boat, oars, rudder and thwarts, instruments and stationery, photographic apparatus, dry plates, and miscellaneous articles too numerous to mention, weighed a little over 18,000 lbs., or rather more than 8 tons divided as nearly as possible into loads weighing 60 lbs. each, and requiring therefore the carrying capacity of 300 men. The loads were made more than usually light, in order that we might travel with celerity, and not fatigue the people. But still further to provide against sickness and weakness, a supernumerary force of forty men were recruited at Bagamoyo, Konduchi, and the Rufiji delta, who were required to assemble in the neighbourhood of the first-mentioned place. Two hundred and thirty men, consisting of Wangwana, Wanyamwezi, and coast people from Mombasa, Tanga, and Saadani, affixed their marks opposite their names before the American Consul, for wages varying from 2 to 10 dollars per month, and rations according to their capacity, strength, and intelligence, with the understanding that they were to serve for two years, or until such time as their services should be no longer required in Africa, and were to perform their duties cheerfully and promptly. On the day of “signing” the contract, each adult received an advance of 20 dollars, or four months’ pay, and each youth 10 dollars, or four months’ pay. Ration money was also paid them from the time of first enlistment, at the rate of 1 dollar per week, up to the day we left the coast. These conditions were, however, not entered into without requiring the presence of each person’s friends and relatives to witness and sanction the engagements, so that on this day the parents, uncles, cousins, and near and distant relatives, wives and children, were in attendance, and crowded every room and court at the American Consulate. The entire amount disbursed in cash for advances of pay and rations at Zanzibar and Bagamoyo was 6260 dollars, or nearly £1300. The obligations, however, were not all on one side. Besides the due payment to them of their wages on demand, and selling them such cloths as they would require for dress while in Africa at reasonable prices, which would be a little above cost price at Zanzibar, I was compelled to bind myself to them, on the word of an “honourable white man,” to observe the following conditions as to conduct towards them:— 1st. That I should treat them kindly, and be patient with them.