fortified with stained-glass spectacles, I usually visited the market-place, with beads in hand, to purchase daily supplies. The market is held between the hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M., near the port, and consists of a few temporary huts, composed of grass and branches hastily tied together. Most of these are thrown up day by day. The commodities brought for sale are fish, flesh, tobacco, palm oil, and spirits, different kinds of potatoes, artichokes, several sorts of beans, plantains, melons, cotton, sugar-cane, a variety of pulse and vegetables, ivories, and sometimes slaves. Between these perambulations, I spent the day reclining with my eyes shut. At length, after eighteen days' negotiations, improved by these constitutional diversions and rest, and longing for a change, especially one that led across the sea, and afforded the means of surveying it, I proposed to go myself, and treat directly with Sheikh Hamed. Captain Burton threw obstacles in my way at first, saying canoes were not safe on such a large lake, but he finally gave in when I pressed the advisability of my doing so. This intention soon reached the ears of Kannina, who, fearing that he might thus lose much cloth, threw obstacles in the way, and most unjustly demanded as large a passport-fee for my crossing as had been given to the other chief; which demand we were obliged to comply with, or the men would not take up an oar. Chapter II. Canoes--The Crews--The Biography of Bombay--The Voyage--Crocodiles--The Lake Scenery--Kivira Island--Black Beetles--An Adventure with One of Them--Kasengé Island--African Slavery. 3d March 1858.--ALL being settled, I set out in a long narrow canoe, hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree. These vessels are mostly built from large timbers, growing in the district of Uguhha, on the western side of the lake. The seats of these canoes are bars of wood tied transversely to the length. The kit taken consists of one load (60 lb.) of cloth (American sheeting), another of large blue beads, a magazine of powder, and seven kitindis. The party is composed of Bombay, my interpreter; Gaetano, the Goanese cook-boy; two Beluch soldiers; one Nakhuda or sea-captain, who sometimes wore a goat-skin; and twenty stark-naked savage sailors: twenty-six in all. Of these only ten started, the remainder leaving word that they would follow down the coast, and meet us at a _khambi_ (encampment), three miles distant, by 12 o'clock. The ten, however, sufficient for the occasion, move merrily off at 9 A.M., and in an hour we reached the rendezvous, under a large spreading tree on the right bank of the mouth of the river Ruché.