The Wasawahili are by no means a jet-black people, as Pritchard, misled by Dr Bird, has assumed; nor, indeed, is this the distinction of the Zanzibarian races generally. The skin is a chocolate-brown, varying in shades, as amongst ourselves, but usually not darker than the complexion of Southern Arabia. About Lamu and Patta the colour is yellow-brown; at Mombasah and Zanzibar dark-brown; and south of Kilwa, I am told, black- brown. Mostly the hair is jetty, unless sunburnt; crisp, and curling short; it splits after growing a few inches long, and often it is planted like the body pile, in distinct ‘pepper-corns.’ The barbule is a degeneracy from the Arab goatee, and the mustachios are short and scanty. The oval skull, too dolichocephalous to be purely Caucasian, is much flattened at the walls, and sometimes the upper, brow (the reflective region of Gall) is too highly developed for the lower. The eyes, with dark-brown pupils and cornea stained dirty bilious-yellow, are straight and well-opened, but the nose is flat and patulous, the mouth is coarse and ill-cut; the lips, often everted, project unduly; the teeth are obliquely set, and the jaw is prognathous. The figure is loose and pulpy, and even in early manhood the waist is seldom finely formed; in many men I have seen the nipples placed unusually low down, whilst the women have the flaccid pendulous breasts of negresses. Both sexes fail in point of hips, which are lank and angular, whereas those of the inner savages are finely rounded. The shanks are bowed forwards, the calf is high raised and bunchy, the heel is long, and the extremities are coarse and large. There is another proof of African blood which can hardly be quoted here: many overland travellers have remarked it amongst the boatmen of Egypt.[105]