About 9 A.M. the first canoe arrived, and its occupants received warm and hearty welcome. Soon others arrived, while the big market-drum continued to hasten the natives from both banks—from Rubunga and Urangi on the left, and Gunji and Upoto on the right. In light, swift, elegant canoes, of the caique pattern, the people brought fresh and dried fish, snails, oysters, mussels, dried dogs’-meat, live dogs and goats, bananas, plantains, robes of grass cloth, cassava tubers, flour and bread of the consistence of sailor’s “duff,” spears, knives, axes, hatchets, bells, iron bracelets and girdles, in fact everything that is saleable or purchasable on the shores of the Livingstone. The knives were singular specimens of the African smith’s art, being principally of a waving, sickle-shaped pattern, while the principal men carried brass- handled weapons, 18 inches long, double-edged, and rather wide-pointed, with two blood channels along the centre of the broad blade, while near the hilt the blade was pierced by two quarter-circular holes, while the top of the haft was ornamented with the fur of the otter. The aborigines dress their hair with an art peculiar to the Warua and Waguha, which consists in wearing it in tufts on the back of the head, and fastening it with elegantly shaped iron hairpins—a fashion which also obtains among many kitchen maids in England. Tattooing is carried to excess, every portion of the skin bearing punctured marks, from the roots of the hair down to the knees. Their breasts are like hieroglyphic parchment charts, marked with _raised_ figures, ledges, squares, circles, wavy lines, tuberose knots, rosettes, and every conceivable design. No colouring substance had been introduced into these incisions and punctures; the cuticle had simply been tortured and irritated by the injection of some irritants or air. Indeed, some of the glossy tubercules, which contained air, were as large as hens’ eggs. As many as six thin ledges marked the foreheads from temple to temple, as many ran down each cheek, while from lower eyelid to base of septum curved wavy lines; the chin showed rosettes, the neck seemed goitrous with the large vesicular protuberances, while the front parts of their bodies afforded broad fields upon which the native artist had displayed the exuberant fertility of his genius. To such an extent is this fashion carried that the people are hideously deformed, many of them having quite unnatural features and necks. [Illustration: KNIVES, RUBUNGA.] To add to the atrocious bad taste of these aborigines, their necklaces consisted of human, gorilla, and crocodile teeth, in such quantity in many cases that little or nothing could be seen of the neck. A few possessed polished boars’ tusks, with the points made to meet from each side.