The wedding festivities outlast the month: there are great ‘affinities of gossips;’ tympanum et tripudium; hard eating and harder wetting of the driest clay with the longest draughts of Tembo K’hali (sour toddy), of Pombe beer (the Kafir Chuala), and of the maddening Zerambo. Processions of free women and slave girls, preceded by chattels performing on various utensils of music, perambulate the streets, singing and dancing in every court. At length the Kazi, or any other man of letters, recites the Fatiheh, and the two become one, either at the bridegroom’s or at the bride’s house. The women are present when the happy man enters the nuptial chamber, and they always require to be ejected by main force. Unlike the Arabs, they retain the Jewish practice of inspection: if the process be satisfactory, the bridegroom presents $10 to $50 to his new connections, while the exemplary young person is blessed, congratulated, and petted with small gifts by papa and mamma. She often owes, it is whispered, her blushing honours to the simple process of cutting a pigeon’s throat. In case of a disappointment, there is a violent scene of abuse and recrimination; but when lungs and wrath are exhausted, the storm is lulled without blows or even divorce. The first ‘Mfungato,’ i. e. seven (days) after consummation, is devoted to the wildest revelry, the ‘Walímeh,’ or wedding feast, concluding only with the materials for feasting. The Msawahili is allowed to breathe his last upon a couch, and the corpse, after being washed by an Alim or by some kinsman, is hastily wrapped in a perfumed winding-sheet. Women of the highest rank sit at home in solitary grief. The middle-classes stain their faces, assume dark or dingy-coloured dresses, and repair to the sea-shore for the purpose of washing the dead man’s clothes before dividing them amongst his relations or distributing them to the poor. The slave girls shave their heads like Hindus, bathe, and go about the streets singing Neniæ, and mourning aloud. Meanwhile a collection, technically known as Sándá (the winding-sheet), is made amongst the people, who are almost all connected by a near or distant tie. One of the blood-kinsmen acts Munádi, or crier. As each one appears with his quotum, he shouts ‘lo! such a person (naming him) has bought such and such articles for his brother’s funeral feast.’ This publicity tends of course to make men liberal. The corpse is buried, as is customary amongst Moslems, on the day, generally the evening, of decease, and there is a popular belief, in which some Europeans join, that deaths take place mostly when the tide ebbs, at the full and change of the moon. The custom of abusing the corpse, accompanied with the greatest indecencies, is confined to the least civilized settlements. After the funeral all apply themselves to eating, drinking, and what we should call merriment; whilst music and dancing are kept up as long as weak human nature permits. The object is