Tradition asserts, contrary to received opinion, that the Conquistadores penetrated far into the interior, and common sense suggests that soldiers so adventurous would not confine themselves to the seaboard. The Wasawahili speak of a ruined castle on Njuira, a hill north of the Pangani river, and placed by M. Rebmann 160 miles from the ocean. At Chaga, a district west of Mombasah, whose apex is the well-known and much-vexed Kilima-njaro or Kilima-ngao, stone walls, a breastwork for cannon, and an image of a long-haired woman seated upon a chair and holding a child, are reported still to remain. The Wanyika, or ‘Desert people’ of the Mombasah Range, have preserved in their Kayas, or strongholds near Rabai Mku, certain images which they declare came from the west. According to Dr Krapf, these statuettes, called Kisukas, or little devils, are carried in war processions to encourage the combatants. No European has ever seen this ‘great medicine,’ nor has any Chief ever dared even to propose showing them to the mission: whenever a European evinced more pertinacity than was pleasing, he found the bushes upon his path bristling with bow and spear, and capped by the woolly mops of the sable Roderick Dhu’s clansmen. ‘And every tuft of broom gave life To nigger warrior armed for strife.’ Iconolatry is unknown to these tribes, and the savages probably derived their Kisukas from some civilized race. According to Andrew Battel, of Leigh, the English captive at Angola (A.D. 1589), the Jagas, or Giagas,[5] did not worship, but had small images in their towns, and a life-sized figure of a man called Quesango. As a rule, however, especially in the non-maritime regions, the negro’s want of constructiveness and of plastic power prevent his being an idolater in the literal sense of the word: he finds it more convenient to make a god of ‘grass or palm-leaves and broken pieces of calabashes, to which feathers of fowls are fastened by means of blood.’[6]