Respectable Wasawahili dress like Arabs in ‘Kofíyya,’ here meaning red caps, and the long Disdashah, or night-gown; the loins are girt with a ‘Kamarband’-shawl, and sandals protect the feet. Others are contented with the Hammam-toilette, waist-cloth (Shukkah or Tanga) and shoulder- sheets (Izár), always adorned with the favourite fringe (Tambúa or Taraza). This is at once the simplest and one of the most ancient of attires; the plate from Montfaucon’s Cosmas Indicopleustes (1706, Topographia Christiana) reproduced by Vincent (Periplus, Appendix, part I.) shows the kilt to have been the general dress of the ancient Æthiopians, as the spear was their weapon. Before superiors they bare the shaven poll, an un-Oriental custom probably learned from the Portuguese. As amongst the Arab Bedawin, the Syrian Rayahs, and the Persian Iliyat, the women mostly go abroad unveiled. The ‘Murungawánah,’ or freeborn, however, is distinguished out-of-doors by her rude mantilla, and ‘ladies’ affect an Ukaya, or fillet of indigo-dyed cotton, or muslin, somewhat like that of the Somal and the Syrians. The feminine garb is a Kisitu, or length of stained cotton, blue and red being the pet colours. It resembles the Kitambi of the Malagash, and it is the nearest approach to the primitive African kilt of skin or tree bark. Wrapped tightly round the unsupported bosom, and extending from the armpits to the heels, this ungraceful garb depresses the breast, spoils the figure, and conceals nothing of its deficiencies. The hair, like the body, drips with unfragrant cocoa-nut oil; and though there is not much material to work upon, it is worked in various fanciful styles. Many shave clean; some wear a half-crop, like a skull-cap of Astracan wool; others a full-grown bush covering the whole head. These part it down the middle, with an asinine cross over the regions of veneration; those draw longitudinal lines above the ears, making a threefold parting; there are also garnishings and outworks of stunted pigtails, forming stiff and savage accroche-cœurs. Two peculiar coiffures at once attract the stranger’s eye. One makes the head look as if split into a pair of peaks, the side hair being raised from sinciput to occiput in tall double unpadded rolls, parted by a deep central hollow: this style is nowhere so pronounced as near the Gaboon river, where the heads of the Mpongwe girls appear short-horned. The other consists of frizzly twists trained lengthwise from nape to brow, and the whitish etiolated scalp showing itself between the lines as though the razor had been used: the stripes suggest the sections of a musk-melon or the meridians of a map.