Veritable half-castes, the Wasawahili have inherited the characters of both parents. From the Arab they derive shrewd thinking and practice in concealing thought: they will welcome a man with the determination to murder him; they have unusual confidence, self-esteem, and complacency; fondness for praise, honours, and distinctions; keenness together with short-sightedness in matters of business, and a nameless horror of responsibility and regular occupation. Africa has gifted them with comparative freedom from bigotry—they are not admodum dediti religionibus. Usually the Moslem combines commerce with proselytizing, opposed to our system, which divides by a wide gulf the merchant’s career from that of the Missionary, and which unites them only upon the subscription sheet. These people care little to make converts: their African languor upon doctrinal points prevents their becoming fanatics or proselytizers. African also is their eternal, restless suspicion, the wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their sluggish imagination and small powers of concentration. They excel in negro duplicity; they are infinitely great in the ‘Small wares and petty points of cunning,’ and they will boast of this vile eminence, saying, ‘Are we not Wasawahili?’ men who obtain their ends by foxship? Natum mendacio genus, truth is unknown to it; honesty and candour are ignored even by name. When they assert they probably lie, when they swear they certainly lie. The favourite oath is ‘Mi mi wad (or M’áná) harámí—I am a bastard if,’ &c., &c., and it is never respected. The language is very foul, and such expressions as Komanyoko are never out of the mouth. The Msawahili will not ask a thing openly: he waits, fidgeting withal, till the subject edge itself in, and then he will rather hint than speak out. At the same time he is an inveterate beggar, and the outstretching of hands seems to relieve his brain. When his mind is set upon an acquisition, he becomes a monomaniac, like that child-man the savage. His nonchalance, carelessness, and improvidence pass all bounds. He will light his pipe under a dozen leaky kegs of gunpowder; ‘he will set a house on fire, as it were, to roast his eggs;’ he will wreck his ship because anchoring her to the beach saves trouble in loading; he might make his coast a mine of wealth, but he will not work till hunger compels him, and his pure insouciance has allowed his valuable commerce to be wrested from him by Europeans, Hindus, and Arabs. His dislike of direct action exceeds that of the Bedawi, and yet he quotes a proverb touching procrastination, ‘Leo kabli yá kesho,’—to-day is before to-morrow—better than our ‘To-morrow never comes.’