‘I have backed the steed since my eyes saw light, And have fronted Death till he feared my sight; And the riven helm and the piercèd mail Were my youthtide’s dream, are my manhood’s delight.’ After two hours of brisk sailing, we lay abreast of a headland called by our crew Kwala (Chala Point of the Hydrographic Map), bounding the deep inlet and outlying islets of Jongolia-ni or Chongolia-ni. Approaching the gape of Tanga Bay, he shortened sail, or we might have made it at 4 P.M.: the entrance, however, is intricate; we had no pilot, and the crew preferred hobbling in under a bit of artemon or foresail, which they took a good hour to hoist. At sunset, having threaded the ‘Bab’ or narrow rock-bound passage which separates Ra’as Rashid, the northern mainland-spit, a precipitous bluff some 20 feet high, from the head of Tanga Islet, we glided into the smooth bay, and anchored in three fathoms, opposite and about half a mile from the town, which is known by the cocoas and calabashes crowning the ridge. Tanga Bay is placed by Captain Owen in S. lat. 4° 35′, or five miles N. of Wasin Island, and thus the positions of the whole Coast are thrown out.[22] It is in S. lat. 5°; South of Wasin, and between that place and the mouth of the Panga-ni river. This extraordinary error can have been made only by a confusion of the survey-sheets, and it appears the more singular in a work of such correctness. The inlet, called probably from its shape, Tanga, the sail, or kilt, is five miles deep by four broad, and the entrance is partially barred by a coralline bank, the site of the ancient Arab settlement. Tanga Islet, a lump of green, still contains a scatter of huts, and a small square stone Gurayza (fort), whose single gun lies dismounted: it is well wooded, but the water obtained by digging pits in the sand is scarcely potable. As a breakwater it is imperfect during the N. East trades: when a high sea rolls up ships must anchor under the mainland, and when the S. West monsoon blows home it is almost impossible to leave the harbour without accident. The bay, embanked with abundant verdure and surrounded by little settlements, receives the contents of two fresh-water streamlets: westward (311°) is the Mtofu, and N. of it (355°) the Mto Mvo-ni[23] or Kiboko-ni—Hippopotamus river. The latter at several miles distant from its mouth must be crossed in a ferry; it affords sweet water, but the people of Tanga prefer scratching into their sand to the trouble of fetching the pure element. The ‘Kiboko’ is found in small numbers at the embouchures of these islands, and often within a few yards of where the boys bathed. I defer an account of our sport till we meet that unamiable pachyderm upon the Panga-ni river.